Holistic healing

Emma Cannon’s Fertility Rules

Our women’s health expert explains why she takes the relaxed approach

I wrote my new book Fertile to support the heart (emotions) as much as the body. It is a book about passion; passion for life and passion for food. My aim is to show the reader how to live a more fertile and abundant life and increase their body/mind awareness. If you want to nourish another, first you must learn to nourish yourself. My approach is to make delicious food and still leave time for baby making. After all you can have the best diet in the world but if you don’t make time for making love, babies tend to take a lot longer to come along.

My aim in everything I do is to help people understand their body, what to eat to make the body function better, how to improve digestion and microbes, how to use food to manage minor (and not so minor) period problems, how to live to be more fertile, have balanced hormones, manage mood swings or improve libido.

I believe in cultivating health and fertility, without becoming rigid or controlling. In many ways baby making is a lot like cooking; first we must have all the right ingredients and a vision of what we are trying to create. Once we have put the ingredients together we need good timing and then we wait for the transformation to occur. When we bake a cake, at some point we must leave it alone and not keep looking and poking and prodding. So we can prepare and do our very best, and then at some point we must have faith in the process, sit back and let the magic happen.

A fertile life

Throughout our day, however busy we are, there are tiny adjustments that can be made to live a more fertile life. Like getting up 20 minutes earlier to stretch or meditate or spend the time on a heartfelt project that always gets put to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list. Feeling grounded and strong. Deciding to engage fully in making a delicious breakfast to start the day, instead of reaching for empty calories. Walking to work and taking in our surroundings.

The human body is challenged like never before, yet we are living longer and have higher expectations of our bodies. I have discovered over 21 years plus in practice that it doesn’t matter what reason a new patient or couple comes to see me, my role is to help them be more balanced, whether it is in the body, the mind or in their lives (usually a little of all three). It is encouraging to see so many people now actively involved in their own health and fertility. The conversation is really beginning to grow around this topic. People appear to be more able to talk openly about fertility, concerns about not leaving it too late and also how their diet or lifestyle might have an impact on things are all current topics of discussion. There is a real sea change in people’s awareness and an acceptance that how we live our lives does impact on our health and fertility.

When you are trying for a baby it is important to take the correct advice and not be tempted to cut too many things out of your diet. And always try to keep a calm attitude towards food. After all a controlling and rigid relationship with the very thing that nourishes us is more damaging than occasionally just eating what your heart desires and feeling good about it.

Want to know more?

Check out Emma’s new book Fertile (£20, Vermillion)