Alkalize for Fertility and Health: Increasing Egg Quality and Your Chances of Getting Pregnant with Fertility Foods.
Can pH levels affect egg quality?
Can our pH levels, in other words our acid-alkaline balance, affect egg and sperm quality conception, implantation, and just about every organ function involved in getting pregnant?
The answer is a resounding yes.
If your cervical fluid is too acidic, the sperm will have a hard time reaching the egg or even surviving in an overly acidic environment. What I see in the Fertile Heart retreats is that a lot of women and men who are meat eaters or are on some form of high protein diet, tend to be acidic.
Do’s and Don’ts of Tilting the Scale toward an Alkaline, Conception Friendly Environment
I have touched on the subject of acid alkaline balance and explained the basic ideas of pH levels in the “Ally in the Cupboard chapter of The Fertile Female.This page hopes to give you a few basic no nonsense guidelines on maintaining a conception friendly alkaline Holy Human Loaf.
What does that mean in practical terms to maintain a healthy acid alkaline balance?
- Begin with making sure that all is well with your digestion-elimination because acidic waste can be re-absorbed from the colon into the liver and make your system too acidic.
- Replace or decrease the consumption of acid forming foods such as caffeine, alcohol, sugar, dairy products with alkalizing foods. See a sample list of foods at the bottom of this document.
- Your feelings, thoughts, actions are also tilting the scale toward either a more alkaline or acidic environment. The Fertile Heart Imagery, Body Truth and all of the ideas of the I.B.O.W. practice are meant to support your nervous system balancing all organ functions.
- Pleasurable exercise, massage, journaling, engaging in creative pursuits are all calming and as such alkalizing activities.
- Learn how the foods you eat affect your body’s acid-alkaline balance. But above all, please don’t use this information to drive yourself crazy with regard to food and fertility. Instead see if you can use the information to engage your kitchen-creativity and experience the power you have to be your body’s chief change maker.
Below is a brief list of fertility foods to jump start your alkalizing experiment:
Alkaline Forming Fruits: apples, apricots, avocadoes, blackberries, blueberries, currants, graperfruits, lemons, limes, papayas, pears, persimmons, pineapples, raspeerries, strawberries, tangerines watermelons,
Alkaline Forming Vegetables: artichokes, asparagus, beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery cauliflower, chard, cucumber, dill, eggplant, endive, garlic, ginger, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, parsley, parsnips, pumpkin, radish, romaine lettuce, rutabagas, sauerkraut, turnips, watercress, yams,
Alkaline Forming Grains:
Buckwheat flour, millet, oatmeal (non sweetened)
Alkaline Nuts:
Almonds, chestnuts (roasted) coconut (fresh) cashews, macadamia nuts
Sources:
The Acid-Alkaline Diet for Optimum Health, Christopher Vasey, N.D. Healing Arts Press 2004
Baroody, Theodore A. Alkalize or Die. Holographic Health Press, 1991.
Calbom, Cherie and Maureen Keane. Juicing For Life. Avery Publishing Group Inc., 1992
Murray, Michael, Joseph Pizzorno, and Lara Pizzorno. The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods. Atria Books, 2005.
Pitchford, Paul. Healing with Whole Foods.North Atlantic Books, 1993.
Dear Julia and Fertile Mamas,
Thank you, Julia, for posting this about alkalizing foods. Also it helps to know what activities might be beneficial as well.
I have been working with Unconditional Gratitude Fertile Heart Body Truth and Palace of Truth (Palace of Love and Acceptance) Fertile Heart Imagery (Imagery II). I have been very much focused on the fear orphan, but lately I have been recognizing that I also have a self-sabotage orphan with a pretty strong voice. So I am working on strengthening the Visionary who is on her own side. The way I am doing this is thinking about the ways I might be sabotaging myself and then the visionary would do the opposite.
Blessings to all.
This is a great reminder and comes at a perfect time to bring me back on track. I stopped eating meat & dairy and drinking coffee for a while but since some time I have started again. I guess the ‘excuse’ was to have too many changes in my personal life situation which supposedly made it more difficult to pay more attention to the foods I ate. Now since things have settled again I think it is a good time to cut down on the meat & dairy again. Thanks Julia.
Following this alkalizing diet in order to conceive, is just another example how this baby journey can lead us to a more healthy life. Hope we will get the bonus that we can teach our offspring all what we learned about healthy eating.
Dear Julia, thank you for a great blog. I have been eating a little meat (only organic, free range or grass fed) but try to include lots of alkalising foods in my daily meals to lean towards a more alkaline balance. For example if I have some meat I will cook it with vegetables and three quarters of my plate will be veg such as curly kale. The list is really helpful and has inspired me to try some different alkalising foods. I have been eating Sheeps or Goats dairy but I’m going to experiment cutting these out. Very best, T