I practice in Boulder, Colorado, and many of my patients are vegetarians. Some are vegans (who eat no animal food at all.) In my experience, vegetarians eventually become qi and blood deficient. It is hard to make strong blood from plant sources of protein. When these are women who are suffering from from infertility or recurrent miscarriage, I generally recommend to these women that they include fish oil, eggs, goat cheese and fish (at least 2 x a week) in their diets (as long as they are not allergic to these foods.) These temporary changes in their diet can make a big difference in their ability to get pregnant, have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. Increasing good quality protein helps prevent such problems as pre-eclampsia, high blood pressure, fluid retention, low birth weight, and learning disabilities in children.
The traditional Chinese diet did not contain dairy, but did have eggs, fish, and meat sources. In that diet, you find an abundance of vegetables, cooked in various manners including stir fry, along with smaller amounts of animal food for protein as well as bean products (soy and other beans), and rice. It is a low fat and whole food/complex carbohydrate diet, very low in processed foods and refined grains. Traditionally foods such as meat broths and even bone marrow soups (along with certain blood building herbs like tang quei) are recommended for nourishing and building blood.
It becomes quite a challenge when trying to counsel folks around infertility issues when diet philosophies and lifestyles clash with traditional Chinese dietary therapy. I talk with many colleagues about how they navigate these issues with the women who come to see them. Chinese medical theory talks about “pre-natal essence and jing”, which is the precious constitutional essence that we are born with, and have to maintain throughout our lives. We can do this through careful eating and getting enough rest, not over-exercising or over-working (either physical labor or 60-80 hour work weeks that we see commonly in our culture, which creates adrenal burnout), taking herbs and nutritional support, avoiding extremes, essentially living a life of moderation. This is very basic to Chinese Medicine, and is practically unknown in US culture! Post-natal essence is derived from eating nourishing foods and following a moderate lifestyle. From the point of view of Chinese philosophy, eating a vegan diet results in depleting the precious prenatal essence. This shows up with blood and qi deficiency, hormone deficiencies, problems with egg quality and maintaining pregnancies, and underweight babies.
It is not unusual in my practice to see women in their early 40′s who are trying to conceive for the first time, have been on birth control for 20 years, who are athletic and train hard every week, and who maintain stressful work lives often working 40-60 hours a week. On top of this, some follow a vegan or vegetarian diet deficient in protein.
By age 35, women begin to become perimenopausal, with gradually dropping progesterone levels, aggravated by stressful lifestyles, caffeine, a diet too high in sugar and refined carbohydrates, and stressed adrenal glands. By their 40′s, their periods become irregular, and their ovulations are unpredictable. Chinese Medicine can offer a treatment program to help them become more fertile by getting back in balance through dietary and lifestyle changes, and with acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Statistically, 10% of couples worldwide are infertile, due to issues like delaying pregnancy, dropping sperm levels, and toxic exposure to chemicals. Even with challenges like this, Chinese medicine is doing a great job in helping these couples get pregnant.
We are the way we are because it’s in our genes: the DNA we inherited at conception. For women, the quality of our eggs is affected by our nutritional status and stress levels. During periods of high stress and poor nutrition, women become infertile. (This happens during times of war and famine.) In the same vein, the kind and quantity of nutrition a baby receives in the womb, the pollutants, drugs and infections it is exposed to during gestation, the mother’s health, stress level and state of mind while she is pregnant — all these factors shape the baby and its future health. “Fetal origin pioneers assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives, permanently influencing the wiring of the brain and the functioning of organs such as the heart, liver and pancreas. The conditions we encounter in utero, they claim, shape our susceptibility to disease, our appetite and metabolism, our intelligence and temperament. In the literature on the subject, which has exploded over the past 10 years, you can find references to the fetal origins of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies, asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental illness — even of conditions associated with old age like arthritis, osteoporosis and cognitive decline. The field of fetal origins began about 20 years ago in the United Kingdom. A British physician named David Barker discovered that there was a pattern of especially high rates of heart disease throughout the poorest areas of the U.K. He set out to determine why, when cardiovascular problems are thought to mainly afflict the affluent, this held true for the very poor. What he found was a correlation between heart disease in middle age and low birth weight, which often indicates poor prenatal nutrition. In the two decades since Barker’s findings, the same results have been found among numerous studies, including the Nurses’ Health Study in Boston.” (Quoted from article on my Facebook page, entitled “Is the Fate of our Health Decided in the Womb?”)
In an article called “Vegetarian Diets and Infertility” by Constantin Monastyrky, he discusses what he believes to be the specific reasons for a higher prevalence of infertility among strict vegetarian compared to omnivores.
“Among the best documented causes of infertility related to vegetarian lifestyle are (1)protein-energy undernutrition, (2) chronic or pernicious anemia, (3) metabolic syndrome, and (4) digestive disorders. Lets take a look at these four conditions, one-by-one:
— Protein-energy undernutrition is related to the chronic deficiency of essential amino acids, also known as primary proteins. If you are a pescetarian or lacto-ovo vegetarian, you are not likely to be affected by this condition.
Technically, adult vegans can obtain all of the eight essential amino acids — the ones that your body doesn’t make — from carefully combining tree nuts, legumes, and soy. But, unfortunately, soybeans contain some of the highest levels of phytoestrogens. These are naturally occurring substance that act in the body just like estrogen, and they may disrupt ovulation in women and sperm-making in men. All three — soy, legumes and nuts may also become highly allergenic when used as primary foods for extended periods of time.
Depression, fatigue, menstrual irregularity, impotence, and edema — meaning water retention throughout the body — are the most common symptoms of protein-energy undernutrition.
— Chronic or pernicious anemia is another major peril affecting vegetarians. Most people believe that anemia is caused by too little dietary iron. Actually, iron deficiency is only one of the several factors behind anemia.
The other equally important micronutrients required to prevent anemia are folate, vitamins B-12 and C, essential fatty acids, and, again, primary proteins.
Plants have plenty of folate and vitamin C, and some of the essential fatty acids, so these three are not usually the problem. However, the rest — iron, vitamin B-12, and primary proteins — come almost exclusively from red and organ meats.
Adding insult to injury, most of the iron in a vegetarian diet isn’t natural hem iron, but is derived mainly from morning cereals, bread, pasta, and rice fortified with synthetic iron. In many cases this added iron may damage the intestinal organs, and cause even greater undernutrition.
A high degree of allergenicity to wheat gluten, tree nuts, and legumes in vegetarian diets exacerbates anemia, because food allergies block the assimilation of the already meager nutrients required for turning out red blood cells. In these cases, even supplements are not effective, and in the case of an iron overdose, are outright harmful.
A pale appearance, menstrual irregularity, hair loss, conclave nails, low body temperature, frequent respiratory infections, mouth sores, memory lapses, and muscular fatigue while walking uphill or climbing stairs, are the most common signs of chronic anemia in adults.
— The next major contributor is metabolic syndrome related to the chronic overconsumption of dietary carbohydrates. This isn’t surprising — plants are almost exclusively made up of simple and complex carbohydrates. On top of this inescapable fact of nature, farm-raised fruits and vegetables are intentionally cultivated to have a high sugar and starch content.
Also, unlike several generations ago, when fruits and vegetables were available mostly in brief season, today they are exported from all over the world, and are abundant year-round. Many of these fruits are tropical, and they tend to be highly allergenic, particularly for infants and toddlers.
Weight gain is one of the most apparent symptoms of metabolic syndrome. An equally reliable markers are high blood pressure, unstable blood sugar, mood and energy swings, frequent urination, a dry mouth, insomnia, and obviously, elevated levels of A1C, C-Peptide, and triglycerides in your blood test.
There is really only one reliable way to reverse and prevent metabolic syndrome from affecting your health and fertility: keep the consumption of dietary carbohydrates under 200 grams, or 800 calories per day, and avoid anything that tastes sweet, including artificial sweeteners.
This is because the taste of sweetness blasts the level of insulin up, and plunges the level of blood sugar down. This dual action stimulates hunger, appetite, and sugar cravings, and they are impossible to resist for the same reasons you can’t ignore loud noise or sharp pain — basic instincts are always stronger than even the strongest will.
— This brings us to the final major culprit in my list — chronic digestive disorders specific to a vegetarian diet. …
All edible plants contain dietary fiber, and this fiber begins to ferment as soon as it enters the gut. Fiber fermentation produces profuse acid and gases — just like during wine-making, —and they cause the abdominal bloating…. Besides bloating, gases also cause considerable flatulence, a problem that plagues practically all committed vegetarians…Acid from fermentation and common food allergies are also behind irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, and inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD. When this happens, bloating becomes even more pronounced because inflammation traps gases inside the intestines. Inflammation also blocks the assimilation of foods and supplements into the blood, and turns undernutrition into clear-cut malnutrition.
I am open to hearing other people’s points of view, but I worry that extreme diets are counter-productive.
