Veganuary
So we’re a few weeks into veganuary now. I’ve got to be honest, it’s not something I’ve ever done myself. The closest I got to going vegan was as part of my nutrition course - one of our assignments was to follow a popular dietary model for a few weeks and present back on it. I chose vegan. The main reason I chose to do it was because I was pregnant at the time and most of the other diets were contra-indicated in pregnancy. But I also wanted to do it as I know it’s becoming more and more popular these days (I think climate change is a big driver for people), so I wanted to be able to understand it from a client perspective.
3 main things I realised from it were:
I seriously love eggs
You have to check labels on everything and ask questions when out and about
Foods labelled as vegan or seemingly healthy - are often not
Anyway, I digress, as I wanted to talk about vegan diets in relation to fertility. I often get asked what’s the right fertility diet to follow. Firstly, I don’t really believe in ONE diet to follow - rather using a set of principles to guide what and how you eat, which is based on evidence.
However, a vegan diet isn’t one that I would explicitly recommend for someone trying to conceive - and especially to someone who’s been struggling to conceive.
Now don’t get me wrong, I also wouldn’t recommend eating red meat every single day, and following a largely plant based diet is fantastic for health and fertility.
But the fact is that vegan diets - unless followed very carefully and with knowledge or support - are missing or lacking in certain key nutrients that are critical to fertility in men and women.
I wanted to shed a bit of light on some of the key nutrients required for healthy conception and pregnancy - ones that are sometimes lacking or deficient in a vegan diet - and also to share some tips to help you be more mindful of these if following a vegan diet either for January or longer term.
Vitamin A
This mighty vitamin is a critical nutrient for healthy reproduction.
It helps with production of sex hormones (men and women)
It is needed for healthy follicle (egg) development
It supports the endometrium (womb lining)
It can improve semen parameters
It plays an important role in cell differentiation - this means it’s critical for embryogenesis (making the embryo) early on
It comes in two main groups: carotenoids, also called provitamin A,(hello orange and yellow veggies!) and preFORMED vitamin A which includes retinol, retinaldehyde and retinoid acid. The preformed type is only found in animal products
Carotenoids have to be converted into preformed vitamin A to be able to be utilised.
And not everyone is good at that conversion.
So yes, you can get vitamin A from plants and I do very much recommend eating all those colourful veggies - but for someone who is struggling to conceive and is showing other signs of vitamin A deficiency, then I’d be thinking about using preformed vitamin A through diet or supplementation.
Top tip: Plant foods rich in vitamin A include everything orange, yellow, red and green such as:
Sweet potato
Squash
Carrots
Spinach, kale and other leafy greens
Bell peppers
Cantaloupe melon
Papaya
Mango
NOTE *Eating high vitamin A foods, such as liver, is NOT RECOMMENDED when you are pregnant*
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is required for making DNA and energy production - both very key in the process of making a baby.
A study showed that women with higher blood levels of B12 were up to 2 times as likely to have a live birth from assisted reproductive treatment.
Multiple studies show the positive effects of B12 on sperm parameters including sperm count, motility, morphology and sperm DNA.
Vitamin B12 can ONLY be obtained from animal products, fortified foods or supplementation.
Actually that’s not quite true - you can get B12 from mushrooms - but 1 cup of mushrooms provides about 3% of your daily requirement - so that’s a whole lot of mushrooms you’d need to eat.
B12 is stored in our liver. So the thing about it is that someone who has recently gone vegan won’t struggle with B12 deficiency because the liver stores enough B12 for up to 5 years.
It also means that people who have been following a vegan diet for 5 years plus, might not associate any deficiency symptoms with the fact that they’re vegan, because it’s already been so long.
If you’ve been following a vegan diet for some time and looking to conceive, I would recommend getting your B12 levels checked at the doctor and discuss supplementation with them or a qualified nutritionist.
Top tip: In the meantime, make sure you’re getting plenty of mushrooms in your diet and also use fortified foods such as fortified nutritional yeast and fortified plant milks.
Zinc
Wow zinc is an incredible mineral. It is a cofactor for more than 200 enzyme reactions in the body - i.e. it is required for each of those reactions to work effectively.
Zinc can support fertility by its involvement in:
Sperm formation
Egg health (zinc is needed for our body’s natural antioxidant processes
Cell growth and replication (exactly what’s happening in the making of a baby)
Carbohydrate metabolism - zinc insufficiency decreases our response to insulin so it could impact how you manage your blood sugar levels, which impacts fertility
Thyroid function - a decrease in thyroid hormone has been seen in people with zinc deficient diets
Zinc concentrations are highest in animal products such as oysters, meats, poultry and liver.
Yes it is found in plant sources - such as legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, but there are a few things to consider.
Zinc is available in smaller amounts in plants vs animals
A 4 oz (just over 100g) serving of beef or lamb gives you over a third of your daily zinc requirement. To get the same amount of zinc from sesame or pumpkin seeds, you’d need to eat over a third of a cup of them - that’s a lot of seeds!!
The plant foods that are rich in zinc (nuts, seeds, legumes) contain high amounts of phytates - which impair the absorption of zinc and other minerals.
Top tip: Soaking, sprouting and fermenting are some ways to reduce the phytate concentration in these foods and so if following a long term vegan diet or a diet low in animal products, then I would definitely recommend using these approaches.
Iron
This is the mineral that makes up haemoglobin - the protein found in our blood that transports oxygen to our cells.
It is also present in the enzymes used for energy production.
Making a baby is a really energy intensive process. When we’re pregnant we make 30-50% more blood and a whole new organ!!
So we need to make more blood and more energy - and iron is pretty key to that.
Iron is also in the enzymes that protect us from free radical damage - i.e. it’s in our antioxidants - therefore, important for egg and sperm quality.
And it’s important for proper thyroid functioning because it is one of the co-factors for the conversion of T4 to the more active T3 hormone. I’ll be doing a little series on thyroid health for pregnancy in a few weeks, so look out for that.
Following a vegan diet - it’s important to be mindful of your sources of iron. Plant sources of iron are less bioavailable and less easily absorbed than from animal products.
Good sources of iron for vegans include:
Dark green leafy vegetables e.g. spinach, chard, parsley, beet greens, collard greens
Pulses such as lentils, kidney beans, black beans, chickpeas
Seeds such as pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds
Top tip: Eat your iron rich plant foods with a dose of vitamin C. This helps to aid absorption of the iron.
So adding a squeeze of lemon juice to your salads and green veg or green smoothie, or combining your foods with high vitamin C foods such as red pepper, cauliflower, kale and broccoli.
NOTE - *please always test iron levels before supplementing so you can dose appropriately. Having too much iron is just as problematic as too little and the symptoms are very similar*