can diabetes affect fertility? Does it matter if you have type 1 or type 2?
Today on nourish we'll answer all of these questions and more if you've got
diabetes this is a must watch episode so stay tuned.
So I'm very excited to welcome Larissa with us today. Hey Larissa hello hi Mel.
I'm very excited to be here. So thanks for joining us.
Larissa can you just tell our audience first of all just a little bit about what you do
I'm a dietitian located in Geelong Australia and my experience is
working in both clinical and hospital settings and also more recently working
in private practice. I'm also a qualified diabetes educator as well and I guess I
really have developed an interest quite early in my career in pregnancy
nutrition. Particularly I just find that it is quite a challenging time the whole
life stage for women to really achieve a healthy diet and healthy eating and it
is also really important as well as we know what we eat during pregnancy
does really impact you know the outcomes for baby and mum as well.
Very very important and you're doing amazing things specializing like bringing those
two together that specialisation in diabetes as well as nutrition and diet.
So in terms of fertility for people who already have type-2 diabetes or type
1 diabetes, does their diabetes impact upon their chances of conceiving at all?
Both both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can impact a chances for women
wanting to conceive, in slightly different ways. So for women who have
type 1 diabetes particularly if they've had that for quite a long period of time
or large part of their life it can interact with the hormonal regulation
that stimulates a regular menstrual cycle.
type 2 diabetes is a little bit different
it is driven by something that we call insulin resistance and type
2 diabetes often I guess common risk factors for type 2 diabetes are obesity
and polycystic ovary syndrome and both of these things on their own
actually can impact fertility as well.
In terms of optimising your fertility if you have the type 1 or type 2 have
you got some some tips that you would recommend to women?
I think for all women with type diabetes whether it's type 1 or type 2 it is a really
important time to engage with your diabetes team so whether that's a
dietitian, a diabetes educator an endocrinologist that support team that
you have around you for your diabetes. We know that glycemic control at the time
of conception is really important to reduce the risk of congenital
abnormalities and also miscarriages and stillbirths and things like that.
Can you explain a little bit about what congenital abnormalities actually means?
yes so we know that the glycemic control at time and conception
if we're not quite getting as blood sugar glucose control as we'd like to
be achieving and it can interact with the DNA of the egg and also sperm health
at time of conception too and this can lead to congenital abnormalities
such as neural tube defects and things like that. So really we want to be
optimising diabetes levels prior to conceiving if possible. That's correct.
Okay and you mentioned in terms of men's health, so how does diabetes impact
upon sperm health? Diabetes can actually impact fertility for men with
diabetes as well which is a really important thing to think about, both type
1 and type 2 diabetes. So a complication of long term
diabetes is erectile dysfunction which can can cause fertility issues. Also we see
in men with type 1 diabetes that they do sometimes have lower sperm volume and
reduced sperm motility. For men with type 2 diabetes we see that the inflammation
or chronic inflammation that sometimes associated with type 2 diabetes can
really drive DNA changes in sperm health as well. Do you find that improving a
man's diabetes levels their glucose levels that that will improve those
outcomes? Absolutely so a lot of these I guess
issues that we talk about with fertility and men's fertility and sperm health
and things, they do I guess depend on our blood sugar level controls
if we're able to work and engage with our diabetes and improve our blood sugar
level control it will reduce the risk of some of these things from occurring
Is there any other tips that you'd like to provide to people out
there who maybe have either type 1 or type 2 diabetes who might be thinking
about trying to have a baby in the next 12 months? Absolutely so seeing a
dietitian with experience in fertility and also diabetes at this time is really
important so a dietitian is able to provide individualised tailored plans
around how food and what we're eating really impacts our blood sugar levels
and what we can do to improve our chances of falling pregnant and having a
normal healthy pregnancy. So some amazing tips from Larissa so I guess what we're
really hearing is that if you do have type 1 or type 2 diabetes that is a good
idea to improve your glycemic control before conception and so I'd really
encourage you if you know somebody who does have diabetes please share this
video with them because you never know who is trying to conceive and when
they're trying to conceive so it'll be really helpful for them to check this
out prior to them getting pregnant. Also if you do have any questions feel free
to type them in the chat box below we're more than happy to answer your questions
and make sure that you do download my fertility meal plan it's free of charge
just go to www.melaniemcgrice.com/fertility and then make sure that you
enjoy some of our other videos by subscribing. So I look forward to seeing
you at our next video.