3 Great Health Tips to Prepare for Pregnancy

Before you decide to conceive it’s an excellent idea to prepare for pregnancy. If you’re looking for health tips to prepare for pregnancy this article is for you. How can you be prepared? What’s your best plan for a healthy and successful pregnancy?

Preparing one or two years ahead of time for both male and female is a great start. It’s important to identify strengths and weaknesses in your health. You may feel pretty OK health-wise but if you’re not a parent and you want to be – you have no idea what’s coming your way. Several months or even years of sleepless nights are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s best to be prepared. A health care provider who has experience can make the best plans to support your health. An Ob/Gyn (Obstetrician Gynecologist) is a great start especially for women’s health. In addition an acupuncturist also trained in herbal medicine who has experience with fertility can be highly supportive, especially in the early stages before conception where conventional medicine falls short.

You’re making very important plans to bring a new life into the world. Pregnancy is a major challenge on Mom’s health so it’s best to be preventive instead of reactionary. Often times I get infertility cases that are unexplained by conventional medicine but under a Traditional Chinese medical diagnosis and the therapeutic practice of acupuncture many imbalances can be identified and treated. Success always depends on how deep the imbalance has taken hold and early intervention.

Planning ahead of time means contacting a health professional who understands how to optimize health and support fertility through all stages of care – before conception, and pre- and postnatal meaning before birth through pregnancy and after your child is born.

After your child is born, support of Mom and baby continues particularly by supporting Mom’s health through nursing. Let’s not forget Dad. Optimizing health prior to conception also ensures healthy sperm and maximizes Dad’s health. Support for Mom through pregnancy and the fathering of a family that follows is another important piece of the complex health puzzle.

Anything new presents additional levels of stress that can challenge health and needs to be supported. There will be lots of sleepless nights in the coming years and a healthy body does better going into pregnancy and parenthood than a body already compromised health-wise before conception. Making sure your diet is optimized for your health is important to ensure you’re getting the right nutrition. What is commonly accepted as the right nutrition is not necessarily what you need to support your health concerns. Consider a diet and nutritional consult to discover any imbalances. Put yourself on the path to optimal health the natural way. It just makes good sense.

Here are 3 tips to practice before conceiving for both men and women.

1. Address untreated health issues – Any health issues not being cared for or not treated needs to be looked into such as anxiety, depression, poor digestion, migraines, diabetes, high blood pressure, insomnia, low energy and more. Learn how your current health issues could affect pregnancy. Consider a consult and evaluation. Talk to a health professional. See if you can optimize your health ahead of time instead of going into conception blind.
2. Optimize Sleep – if you have poor sleeping habits this is an area of great concern for your health over the years and needs to be addressed. Your body repairs, rejuvenates and restores itself during sleep. Make your bedroom a dark, quiet place of peace and relaxation. Avoid watching TV in bed. Maintain a regular sleep schedule going to bed and waking at the same times. Get 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night – your body will tell you if you need more or less. If you wake feeling tired or you tend to have low energy patterns, improving your sleep is important. If you struggle with sleep problems acupuncture and a diet or supplement consult is definitely a natural therapy to consider.
3. Optimize Diet – there is a “general healthy diet” for everyone to follow and there are specific diets for individuals to maintain and restore balance in health. A diet consult can help you. In general sugar and carbs are a big problem in our society leading to weight gain. Sugar and carbs that break down into sugar in abundance can unbalance the endocrine system responsible for hormone production. The endocrine system includes the following glands: pituitary, pineal, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, testicles, and ovaries. This system can be a major source of health problems when out of balance and not supported properly. In addition, it is necessary to make sure you are making health fat choices. Fat is an essential nutrient and a precursor for hormone production. Bad fats are hydrogenated oils, trans-fats, and fats that have turned rancid – think of the good fats in nuts but let them hang around too long and they can turn rancid. Think about oils that have been overcooked by deep frying for example. The high heat destroys the fat and now is considered a bad fat. Another bad choice would be processed and denatured foods. I would not call these real foods. Real foods good bad fairly quickly. Processed foods can sit on selves for long periods of time because they are loaded with chemicals and preservatives – not good.

Imbalances and poor practices in the fundamentals of diet, sleep, exercise and stress management can create all sorts of signs and symptoms and leave you with lots of health problems. I call this symptom-chasing. You end up chasing treatments for signs and symptoms without good results because the fundamentals are not supportive to your health and are just plain messed-up. Maintaining health through maximizing healthy practices in the fundamentals of diet, sleep, exercise, stress management help you stay focused on your true health needs for optimal health, the natural way.

Remember, what you learn now for best practices in health and well-being is what you’ll pass along to your children.

So before deciding to have children make the best plan possible for both Mom and Dad. Consider contacting a holistic health professional to evaluate your health. You’ll be amazed to discover all natural ways to optimize your health for your best pregnancy ever. The only side effect is getting healthier along the way.