Before deciding to conceive it is an excellent idea to prepare for pregnancy. If you are looking for health tips to prepare for pregnancy, this article is for you. How can you be prepared? What is your best plan for a healthy and successful pregnancy?
Preparing a year or two ahead of time for both men and women is a great start. It is important to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your health. You may be feeling pretty good about your health, but if you’re not a parent and you want to be, you have no idea what to expect. Several months or even years of sleepless nights are just the tip of the iceberg. It is best to be prepared. An experienced health care provider can make the best plans to support your health. Year ob/gyn (OB/GYN) is a great start especially for women’s health. Additionally, an acupuncturist also trained in herbal medicine who has fertility experience can be very supportive, especially in the early stages before conception where conventional medicine falls short.
You are making very important plans to bring a new life into the world. Pregnancy is a major health challenge for mom, so it’s better to be preventative rather than reactionary. Many times I have cases of infertility that are not explained by conventional medicine, but under 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 root and on early intervention.
Planning ahead means connecting with a health professional who knows how to optimize health and support fertility at all stages of care: before conception and pre- and postnatal significance before birth, during pregnancy, and after the birth of your child.
After the birth of her child, support for mom and baby continues, in particular by supporting mom’s health through breastfeeding. Let’s not forget dad. Optimizing health before conception also ensures healthy sperm and maximizes dad’s health. Supporting mom through pregnancy and raising 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 support. There will be many sleepless nights in the years to come and it is better to have a healthy body during pregnancy and parenthood than a body that is already health compromised before conception. Making sure your diet is optimized for your health is important to making sure you’re getting the right nutrition. What is commonly accepted as proper nutrition is not necessarily what you need to support your health concerns. Consider a dietary and nutritional consultation to uncover any imbalances. Get on the path to optimal health naturally. It just makes sense.
Here are 3 tips to practice before styling for both men and women.
- Address untreated health problems – Any health issues that go unaddressed or untreated should be looked into such as anxiety, depression, poor digestion, migraines, diabetes, high blood pressure, insomnia, low energy and more. Learn how your current health problems could affect your pregnancy. Consider a consultation and evaluation. Talk to a health professional. See if you can optimize your health ahead of time instead of going to conceive blindly.
- Optimize sleep – if you have poor sleep habits, this is an area of great concern to your health over the years and needs to be addressed. Your body repairs, rejuvenates, and restores itself during sleep. Make your bedroom a dark and quiet place of peace and relaxation. Avoid watching TV in bed. Keep a regular sleep schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time. Get 8-10 hours of sleep a night – your body will tell you if it needs more or less. If you wake up feeling tired or tend to have low energy patterns, it’s important to improve your sleep. If you have trouble sleeping, acupuncture and a diet or supplement consultation are definitely a natural therapy to consider.
- optimize diet – there is a “general healthy diet” for everyone to follow and there are specific diets for people to maintain and restore balance in health. A dietary consultation can help you. Usually sugar and carbs they are a big problem in our society leading to weight gain. sugar and carbs that are broken down into sugar in abundance can throw off the balance of the endocrine system responsible for the production of hormones. The endocrine system includes the following glands: pituitary, pineal, thyroid, thymus, pancreas, testes, and ovaries. This system can be a major source of health problems when it is out of balance and not properly supported. Also, you need to make sure that you are choosing healthy fats. Fat is an essential nutrient and a precursor for hormone production. The bad fats are hydrogenated oils, trans fats, and fats that have gone rancid. Think about the good fats in nuts, but leave them in too long and they can go rancid. Think of oils that have been overcooked from frying, for example. The intense heat destroys the fat and it is now considered a bad fat. Another bad choice would be processed and denatured foods. I wouldn’t call these real foods. Real food is good and bad pretty quickly. Processed foods can stand alone for long periods of time because they are loaded with chemicals and preservatives, which is not a good thing.
Imbalances and poor practices in the fundamentals of diet, sleep, exercise, and stress management can create all kinds of signs and symptoms and leave you with many health problems. I call this symptom chasing. You end up pursuing treatments for the signs and symptoms to no avail because the fundamentals are not supportive of your health and are just plain messed up. Maintaining health by maximizing healthy practices in the fundamentals of diet, sleep, exercise, and stress management help you stay focused on your true health needs for optimal health, naturally.
Remember, what you learn now about health and wellness best practices is what you will pass on to your children.
So before you decide to have children, make the best possible plan for mom and dad. Consider contacting a holistic health professional to assess your health. You’ll be amazed to discover all the natural ways to optimize your health for the best pregnancy of your life. The only side effect is getting healthier along the way.
