Infertility affects 30 to 50% of women with endometriosis. So almost half of women who have endometriosis will experience infertility or difficulty falling pregnant.

And in 25 to 50% of infertility cases endometriosis is a cause.

For many women, trying to fall pregnant and not succeeding is the time when they finally find out that they have endometriosis.

I have quite a few clients who mention infertility as an Endometriosis symptom they want to improve by changing what they eat.

• Some are in their mid-30s and are realizing that they're running out of time.
• And some also have other health concerns that further reduce their fertility.

So in this article, I’ll talk through some of the key steps in the conception process that you need to optimize if you want to improve your chances of falling pregnant. Because there are definitely things you can do to improve your fertility, and your chances of falling pregnant and delivering a healthy baby.

Optimise your egg quality.

We know that women are born with all the eggs they'll ever have. And we we've long thought that the eggs are the eggs or the follicles are the follicles, and there's very little you can do to improve the quality of those eggs.

But we now know that that is not the case. There's actually a lot you can do to improve the quality of your eggs!

One of the main causes of miscarriages or not even falling pregnant when you're trying naturally is because the egg is not of good enough quality and then an embryo will not form properly or will not survive.

A quality egg, when fertilized, is more likely to produce a healthy embryo, which is crucial for the implantation stage and to reduce the risk of miscarriage.

Improve your ovulation

If you want to fall pregnant naturally you need to ovulate, because during ovulation you produce an egg.

And Endometriosis may be affecting your ovulation. For example, if you have Endometriomas on your ovaries, you either may not ovulate or the egg can not be released. Tissue on your fallopian tubes will also affect your ovulation.

Increase the likelihood of implantation

For implantation to take place you need a) a healthy embryo seems to find the perfect implantation spot in the uterus; and b) a healthy uterus wall.

I read an interesting research article not so long ago. It wasn't about Endometriosis, but the researchers looked at women with inflammatory bowel disease who seemed to have lower than normal fertility.

Inflammatory Bowel disease is an autoimmune disease that has a lot of symptoms in common with endometriosis, like systemic chronic inflammation. The researchers looked at whether the uterus wall was also inflamed, and how that might affect implantation. They found that women with inflammatory bowel disease also have inflamed uterine walls, and their theory was that the inflammation reduced the chances of an embryo successfully implanting.

What can you do to improve your fertility?

Endometriosis does not need automatically mean infertility. Just the other day I received an email from a former client to let me know she was 14 weeks pregnant. So how did we improve her fertility?

We designed a way of eating, a ‘diet’, specifically tailored to her and her food sensitivities. Any food sensitivity that goes undetected will contribute to inflammation and removing those foods and replacing them with alternative to ensure she got all the nutrients she needed reduced her inflammation, improved ovulation and led to a healthy implantation.

Another client was not only worried about her Endometriosis, but also concerned that her age – she’s in her late thirties – meant she was running out of good quality eggs. Not only is she following her tailored diet, she and her husband are also taking specific supplements to improve egg and sperm quality.

There are more strategies we can use to improve your fertility naturally.

And if you’ve read this article all the way to this point, I’m guessing fertility is something that you are either concerned about right now, or in the near future.

So you may be interested in "Improve Your Fertility Naturally" - a new program I’m planning to offer. I’m in the planning stages and am going to trial at the beginning of 2022. I will be offering the first program to a small number of women, for a drastically reduced fee, to help me test it. For now, I’m inviting women who have Endometriosis and:

• Are thinking about trying for a baby, or
• Have been trying for a while, unsuccessfully so far; or
• Are considering IVF; or
• Have been able to fall pregnant but have had miscarriages; or
• Are over 35 years old; or
• Any combination of the above!

If you said yes to any of these and would like to do anything you can to improve your fertility and chances to have a healthy baby, you can register your interest (obligation-free!) here.