Diet is a very important part of Collaborative Care’s approach to fertility; indeed, patients who incorporate dietary recommendations consistently see results much more quickly. Just as each patient’s acupuncture and herbal regimens are individualized according to their needs, so is the dietary advice we give at Collaborative Care. However, one piece of advice we give to most our fertility patients is to drink bone broth every day.
Many of our patients used to balk at the mention of so much bone broth, but thanks to its rise in popularity in the mainstream media and health movements like the Paleo and traditional foods diets, it is becoming easier for patients to swallow our recommended daily bone broth regimen.
Blogs like Nourished Kitchen lay out a myriad of benefits of bone broth, and articles like “Bone Broth is the New Coffee” in Epicurious and “Bones, Broth, Bliss” in the New York Times speak to its rise in popularity.
While it may seem like just the latest passing health fad, bone broth as medicine has deep roots in many traditional cultures around the world, including Chinese medicine. Collaborative Care recommends bone broth for fertility based on traditional Chinese medicine principals, which regard all broths very highly. Chinese medicine looks at broth as predigested and thus more easily assimilated by the body.
Bone broth in particular is extremely beneficial to fertility patients from the Chinese Medicine perspective because of its deeply tonifying nature. Chinese Medicine considers bone broth to be sweet, astringent, warming and good for helping kidney deficiencies. Since reproductive health comes from strong kidney energetic reserve and function in Chinese medicine, drinking bone broth can strongly support reproductive processes. In other words, bone broth is good for most patients experiencing fertility issues.
The properties of bone broth can help warm the womb and increase the uterine lining, so it is especially helpful for women with fertility challenges due to a thin or unresponsive uterine lining or a “cold womb.” (From the conventional reproductive perspective, a “cold womb” can occur because of low progesterone or a luteal phase defect.)
Collaborative Care recommends daily beef bone broth for fertility patients that need extra warming and tonifying qualities, such as those that have been poor responders to IVF, and older patients with waning fertility signs. Collaborative Care recommends daily chicken bone broth for fertility patients that are in the early to middle stages of preparing their bodies for optimum fertility.
