Be Fruitful: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Fertility and Giving Birth to a Healthy Child

Maizes, a physician and executive director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, approaches fertility from the perspective of integrative medicine, synthesizing advances in medical science and the wisdom of ancient healing traditions. Maizes devotes an opening chapter to defining how integrative medicine works to address the whole person and the needs of body, mind, and spirit, and then moves on to individual chapters on such topics as lifestyle, nutrition, supplements, and environment. There are also separate chapters on mind-body medicine (including stress management), conventional medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurveda, and spirituality. Throughout, the author offers practical suggestions to help women prepare their bodies for fertility and a healthy pregnancy. For instance, she offers a “fertility enhancing anti-inflammatory diet,” reveals what supplements and foods (including herbs) will promote fertility, and helps readers reduce exposure to environmental toxins. While noting that for various reasons it may be more difficult for women to get pregnant now (e.g., new birth control methods, cultural pressure to be thin, hormone-disrupting stress, fast-food diets), Maizes presents a hopeful and encouraging map mothers-to-be can follow to increase the likelihood of achieving optimum health in body, mind, and spirit before conception and beyond. This straightforward resource clearly explains the fertility benefits of combining the best of conventional and alternative methods. (Feb.)