October 6, 2023
There is increasing evidence that a healthy diet can reduce the risk of miscarriage. An American-Spanish study has now shown that this also applies to pregnancies after artificial insemination, in which the risk of miscarriage is generally higher.
The Harvard researcher Dr. Albert Salas-Huetos and his team examined the extent to which eating habits change before artificial insemination affects the success of fertility treatment.
Eight nutritional recommendations in comparison
The research team recruited a total of 612 women (average age 35 years) who underwent at least one fertility treatment between 2007 and 2019. Using standardized questionnaires, the researchers collected detailed data on nutritional habits before fertility treatment. In addition, other risk factors were recorded, such as body mass index, tobacco consumption, physical activity and medical history.
The eating habits were evaluated based on how closely they corresponded to eight different nutritional recommendations. For each dietary recommendation, the women were divided into four groups, from the lowest (1) to the highest (4) agreement with the diet. The researchers then evaluated how the dietary patterns affected the outcomes of fertility treatment (live birth, clinical pregnancy, pregnancy loss). “Clinical pregnancy” means that a pregnancy was detected 5-6 weeks after artificial insemination.
The eight healthy eating recommendations included three Mediterranean diets, the Healthy Eating Index, the Alternate Healthy Eating Index, the American Heart Association Index (heart-healthy diet), the DASH Index (diet for high blood pressure) and a purely plant-based diet .
In particular, a heart-healthy diet can protect against pregnancy loss
Study participants who consistently ate a healthy diet before fertility treatment had the lowest risk of pregnancy loss. With one exception: with the plant-based diet, the risk fluctuated in the “middle range”. The clearest differences were between a consistent heart-healthy AHA diet (15% risk) and a non-heart-healthy diet (30% risk). Otherwise, the research team found no clear connections between the nutritional patterns examined and the other results of fertility treatments.
The study results suggest that consistent adherence to the American Heart Association’s nutritional recommendations (AHA diet) before fertility treatment could significantly reduce the risk of pregnancy loss.
Editor’s note
The AHA diet is very similar to the Mediterranean diet and includes the following recommendations:
- Great variety of vegetables and fruits
- Whole grain products and grain products that consist predominantly of whole grains
- Healthy sources of protein (mainly legumes and nuts; fish and seafood; low-fat to fat-free dairy products) – if you eat meat and poultry, it should be lean and unprocessed
- Liquid non-tropical vegetable oils (tropical oils include coconut and palm oil)
- As little processed food as possible (such as sausage and convenience foods)
- As few drinks and foods as possible with added sugar (such as glucose, fructose, dextrose, sucrose, corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, fruit juice concentrate)
- Foods prepared with little or no salt
- Preferably no alcohol
Source: Albert Salas-Huetos et al, Women’s Adherence to Healthy Dietary Patterns and Outcomes of Infertility Treatment, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.29982