The Mediterranean Diet: Mediterranean diet 'aids fertility'

How to Lose Weight With The Greek Mediterranean Diet

1. Subdivide your daily food intake into 4-5 sitting. This division helps you digest foods more efficiently and better utilize the main nutrients present in your food.

2. Eat proper amounts of pasta. This is a product capable of acting as the main ingredient of meals.

3. Accompany foods with bread. Try to choose multi-grain bread or traditional Italian bread or rolls and avoid as much as you can speciality breads, that are often prepared with the addition of oil or butter.

4. Include “all-in-one-meals” like pasta with vegetables or legumes in your daily routines. They are typical of Italian cuisine and provide you with the same nutrients as a three-course meal while being also lower in calories.

5. Use olive oil as your preferred fat. It's an extremely digestible fat capable of assisting in the digestion of other fats. Recent studies also suggest that olive oil is the key to the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, due to its content of phenols, a family of weak acidic that repress genes which cause inflammation, so decreasing the risk of heart disease and arthritis.

6. Eat alternative meats such as chicken, rabbit, pork, turkey. They carry similar nutritional values to red meats, but are less fatty by nature.

7. Eat plenty of fish, with special attention to blue fish like sardines and anchovies. They have elevated nutritional value and low fat composition.

8. Limit the use of salt, replacing it with traditional Mediterranean herbs and spices to increase the flavor of foods.

9. Eat plenty of vegetables and fruits, which guarantee the proper consumption of fiber, minerals and vitamins (especially carotene, vitamin C, Vitamin B6 and folate).

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Monday 24 October 2011

Mediterranean diet 'aids fertility'

Men who eat a diet rich in fruit, vegetables and fish could boost their chances of becoming a father, according to a new study.

A Mediterranean-style diet, which also contains leafy vegetables, pulses and whole grains, can enhance sperm motility by 11%.

This could be especially important for couples who are trying to conceive naturally due the need for sperm to be "strong swimmers".

The research comes as a separate study found that men who take moderate exercise can also positively impact their sperm motility. Both studies were presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) conference in Orlando.

In the first, experts from universities including the Harvard School of Public Health, examined the diets of more than 180 men aged 18 to 22. They split those who ate any Mediterranean-type items into four sub-sets, from those with the highest intake of these nutrient-rich foods to those with the lowest. Those in the highest group had an increased sperm motility of 11% compared to the lowest.

Audrey Gaskins, from Harvard's Department of Nutrition, said: "I think motility is most important for couples who are trying to conceive naturally. It's our hope that a small increase could lead to a small increase in fertility rates."

Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer from the academic unit of reproductive and developmental medicine at the University of Sheffield, said the influence of a man's diet on semen quality had been of interest for some time. He said the latest study "nicely illustrates that a good diet is of benefit when trying to conceive".

In the second study, from experts at Yamaguchi University in Japan, 215 men attending an IVF clinic completed a questionnaire about their exercise habits and gave semen samples.

The group reporting moderate exercise had the highest average sperm motility as well as a significantly lower percentage of men with less than 40% sperm motility (14.3%). In the lowest exercise group, 30.8% of men had sperm motility under 40% and 27.1% of men who exercised intensely had sperm motility under 40%.

Dr Dolores Lamb, president-elect of the ASRM, said: "Exercise is a component of an overall healthy lifestyle, which contributes to reproductive health. This study which uses frequency, intensity, and duration to quantify the amount of exercise a subject gets, shows that a moderate exercise routine may be recommended to modestly improve semen parameters in men with no known conditions that impair their reproductive capacity."

UkPress