It’s National Vegetarian Week, and the latest figures show there are just over 3 million vegetarians and vegans, with 4.5% of the UK population having a vegetarian or vegan diet.

Traditionally, meat was the star of a meal, but more and more of us are cutting back or cutting it out together, whether you’re a ‘classic’ vegetarian, lacto or ovo vegetarian, pescetarian or flexitarian. The health benefits of a vegetarian diet can be myriad, from boosting heart health, lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, preventing diabetes and managing your weight to keeping your brain sharp and reducing the risk of cancer.

In our latest blog, we focus specifically on whether a vegetarian diet is good for fertility and explore how other popular diets, ranging from keto to vegan, affect fertility and IVF outcomes.

Does vegetarianism impact your fertility?

The first question should be, does diet affect your fertility? The reasons that couples are unable to conceive range from a woman’s ovaries not producing healthy eggs or blocked fallopian tubes that prevent the egg from moving to the womb to the egg’s inability to attach to the lining of the womb successfully. Male infertility can be the result of poor sperm quality, including motility, morphology and sperm count.

Even after tests, the cause of infertility may not always be clear, as about 15% of infertility cases remain unexplained.

No individual food or supplement can fix these potential issues, but there have been multiple studies into the positive and measurable influence of diet and other related lifestyle choices on fertility.

If done correctly, a vegetarian diet is at least as healthy as one that involves meat. It is important to clarify that any diet—whether plant-based or meat-focused—must be well-planned and varied in terms of nutrients and avoid ultra-process food (UPF). The popularity of plant-based meat alternatives has seen staggering growth in recent years.

In fact, it might be even better, as a 2015 study into IVF couples found that men’s meat consumption could affect the outcome of fertility treatments. Although poultry consumption had a positive impact, processed meats such as bacon and sausage, with men who ate the most processed meats, with an average of 4.3 servings a week, had just a 54% chance of achieving pregnancy with their partner.

What about other popular diets?

A recent study published in Nutrients journal examined the impact popular diets have on fertility. It analysed the Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, the keto diet, and plant-based diets such as vegetarianism and veganism.

• Mediterranean diet: Rich in fruit, vegetables, nuts, whole grains olive oil and other heart-healthy fats, this diet is routinely described as the gold standard for health and there is growing evidence it could also be beneficial for fertility.
• Dash diet: This diet was devised to lower blood pressure. It heavily features fruit, vegetables, and nuts with low meat and salt consumption. It’s been found to be beneficial for PCOS patients.
• Vegetarianism and veganism: Excluding meat and potentially all animal products, these diets can have many health benefits but could cause nutritional deficiencies if poorly planned.
• Ketogenic diet: high fat and low-carb diets have proven very successful in diabetes management or reversing obesity and have also shown significant benefits for women suffering from PCOS.
• Western diet: high in ultra-processed foods and chockfull of sugar and salt, this diet is linked with rising BMIs and associated health risks. Studies have also shown a negative impact on sperm quality and embryo development.

If you’re looking for more advice on nutrition and fertility, please visit our Support Hub, where we provide links to experienced and empathetic dieticians who treat couples and individuals undergoing fertility treatment. To arrange a consultation with one of our fertility experts, call +44 (0) 203 263 6025 or email admin@ariafertility.co.uk.

Egg freezing provides a unique opportunity to protect your fertility potential and it is becoming an increasingly popular and effective treatment option to preserve your eggs until you are ready to start a family in the future.

If you are contemplating egg freezing, it’s essential you are fully informed about the steps involved and the potential benefits as well as possible drawbacks. Here are just some of the questions we commonly get asked about egg freezing.

What is egg freezing?

Egg freezing is a process in which eggs are retrieved from the ovaries and cryopreserved for possible use later. As fertility declines as you age, your chances of achieving a successful pregnancy will be similar to the age you froze your eggs.

Why should you consider egg freezing?

Today, more and more women are delaying starting a family until later in life due to personal, social or career circumstances. As techniques and technology continue to evolve, egg freezing has become an increasingly popular method of preserving fertility, as freezing your eggs at a younger age may offer a better chance of a successful pregnancy.

How are eggs frozen?

Once the eggs are retrieved from the ovaries, they are assessed, and mature eggs are frozen soon after retrieval in a technique known as vitrification. This flash-freezing method means water molecules do not have time to form ice crystals, resulting in less damage when the eggs are thawed.

What can I expect during the egg-freezing process?

The egg-freezing journey typically takes approximately 14 days. As we want to collect as many mature eggs as possible per cycle, the ovaries are stimulated with hormone injections. We will perform scans and blood tests to monitor the progress so we can time the trigger injection. Egg collection is then timed for approximately 36 hours after this time.

What can I expect from the egg retrieval process?

Egg collection is done transvaginally in much the same way as a transvaginal scan. The procedure typically takes 30 minutes under mild sedation. Your eggs will be collected using a needle that goes into each ovarian follicle and uses gentle suction to pull out the fluid which contains the egg.

Once rested, you should be able to return home after a couple of hours. You may experience tiredness, bloating, mild abdominal pain and light vaginal bleeding for a few days after your procedure. Most patients can resume their regular routine the next day.

Is egg freezing painful?

Some elements of the egg-freezing process can be uncomfortable, depending on your sensitivity. However, the experience is not painful for most women.

The hormone injections can sting a bit, but your nurse will advise on how best to administer these injections. During this time, you can feel very bloated and crampy, varying from patient to patient.

Your egg retrieval will be performed under sedation so you will not feel anything, but afterwards, you may experience some mild abdominal pain and a little soreness.

What are the risks of egg freezing?

Egg freezing is considered a relatively safe, low-risk procedure. One potential risk is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).

Stimulation of the ovaries is a deliberate aspect of egg freezing, as we try to obtain as many mature eggs as possible. When the ovaries are stimulated, there is a possibility of OHSS developing, which is an excessive response to the drugs used to encourage multiple follicles to form.

Most cases of OHSS are mild to moderate, occurring in up to 5% of all patients undergoing IVF treatment. This can give symptoms such as mild abdominal discomfort and nausea and usually settles with painkillers and maintaining a good fluid intake.

Very occasionally, OHSS can be more severe, causing marked swelling of the abdomen, dehydration, nausea and vomiting and difficulty in breathing. This is uncommon and may happen in up to 1% of women undergoing ovarian stimulation.

The team will manage the risk of OHSS, which might include altering the dose of stimulation medications or using a different trigger injection.

How many eggs should I freeze?

The success of techniques like IVF is dependent on two main factors: the age at which treatment takes place and the number of eggs the ovaries can produce.

With egg freezing, an additional factor to consider is the chances of eggs thawing successfully.

Current thinking is that women under 35 should try to freeze 20 eggs and women over 35 20-30 eggs. However, a woman’s ovaries may respond very differently to stimulation, which means multiple egg freeze cycles may be required to achieve this number.

How long can I store my eggs?

Once vitrified, eggs may be stored for any period up to a maximum of 55 years from the date they are first placed in storage. However, you must renew your consent every ten years; therefore, you must keep your contact details updated with us.

What happens when I’m ready to use my frozen eggs?

Your eggs will be transported from the cryostorage facility to the clinic and thawed. They will then be fertilised with partner or donor sperm using a fertility process called ICSI.

What happens next?

If you decide to proceed with egg freezing, the first step is a consultation with one of our fertility experts and a fertility assessment. Once any relevant investigations are completed, your consultant will discuss the results with you and any implications. They will inform you of what to expect from egg freezing and provide a detailed, fully costed treatment plan.

You will then attend a nurse planning appointment. During this appointment, we will map out the timeline of your egg-freezing treatment. They will also go through the consent process, which will be explained in detail, and your nurse will answer any further questions you may have.

When you are ready to start, you call to tell us when your period has started, and from there, the egg freezing cycle takes approximately 14 days.

If we haven’t answered your egg-freezing question, contact us to find out more.

Since Jennifer Aniston opened up about her own experiences with IVF and expressed her regret that she had not undergone egg freezing earlier, even more women have begun exploring their fertility preservation options.

Women now have the option of freezing their eggs or embryos, but there are critical differences between the treatments that can determine the best choice for them.

The collection stage

Both procedures start with the same basic premise of egg collection. You will self-administer hormone injections, stimulating the ovaries to produce mature eggs over 8 to 12 days. We will monitor your progress during this stage, and your eggs will be collected at the optimal time. This is a minor surgical procedure performed under sedation in the clinic. The collected eggs are then transferred to our laboratory.

To fertilise or not fertilise

This is the crucial difference between the two treatments. Before they are frozen, the eggs can be fertilised in our laboratory using either your partner’s sperm or donor sperm.

This takes place on the same day as the egg collection. Our embryologist will try to fertilise all mature eggs using intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. If successful, the fertilised eggs will develop into an embryo. Over the next five to six days, the embryos will be carefully monitored as they hopefully progress to the blastocyst stage. The embryos that successfully develop to this stage are then frozen.

The freezing and storage process

Both eggs and embryos are frozen and stored using a method known as cryopreservation. Water in the cell is replaced with a freezing solution called a cryoprotectant which prevents this water from crystallising in the freezing process. The freezing process is called vitrification and entails flash freezing, instantaneous cooling from 37oC to -196oC. The eggs or embryos are then stored in liquid nitrogen.

Using your embryos or eggs

When you’re ready to use your embryos or eggs, our embryologist will thaw them. An embryo that has successfully thawed can be transferred directly back into the body. Frozen eggs that survive the thawing process will then be injected with a partner or donor’s sperm to fertilise them. The fertilised eggs will then develop into embryos and after five to six days can then be transferred to the womb.

The pros and cons of egg freezing vs freezing embryos

Previously, slow-freezing technology was used to freeze eggs or embryos. The cells were cooled very slowly over a couple of hours to avoid ice crystallisation until they reached the optimal storage temperature. Embryos were thought to survive the freezing and thawing process better than eggs as the latter are large size cells with a high-water content, so they are more susceptible to ice crystals forming and causing cellular damage.

The introduction of vitrification or flash freezing has largely eliminated this difference, and the survival rates when freezing eggs versus embryos are now very similar.

Choosing to freeze embryos means you have more information on how many eggs were healthy enough to fertilise and begin development. However, the most important difference is that freezing eggs rather than embryos grants women reproductive autonomy, giving them more options in the future.

Aria Fertility Counselling

Discussing your treatment choice with one of our counsellors can be a very rewarding and empowering session. At Aria, we wish for everyone undergoing fertility preservation treatment to have a full understanding of choices they are making and implications these may have for the future. Our wonderful counsellors will always be able to spare time to have a chat with you and help you come to a decision if you feel you require their expert support.