Good nutrition is also essential for foetal development but key micronutrients may be insufficient in the diets of UK women of childbearing age (NDNS, 2016). High pregnancy BMI and excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) are associated with increased risk of gestational/type 2 diabetes, hypertension, pre-eclampsia and the need for caesarean section in women. Risks to the baby include macrosomia, shoulder dystocia, still birth and birth defects. In later life, these children also have an increased risk of obesity, hypertension and type 2 diabetes (Godfrey et al, 2017).
The prevalence of infertility in the UK is approximately one in seven couples (NICE, 2017) and is associated with a variety of socio-economic factors. In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is the most common treatment method and due to the increasing age of conception and increasing financial constraints within the NHS, the health inequality between those able to afford private treatment and those who cannot self-fund their fertility treatment is ever increasing. Fertility medicine is an extremely fast growing science; however dietetic support within fertility services is often scarce, particularly within the NHS. This support is mainly in the form of weight management; although weight management is a key dietary intervention to improve fertility/treatment outcomes, there are other nutritional considerations that could be implemented that could improve the chances of fertility. For example, there is growing research on the role of antioxidants (Darche et al, 2017) and long chain omega-3 fatty acids (Gaskins @ Chavarro, 2018).
The dietetic voice remains relatively quiet in these fields; highlighting the need for more evidence based practice in order to improve chances of fertility, health outcomes of parents and children and offer savings to the NHS and patients themselves.