Now that we have looked at some of the avoidable things which can keep you from getting pregnant, lets take a look at things you can do to help you get pregnant. These include:

1. Taking a good multivitamin with folate as noted above. This can increase fertility.
2. Taking extra vitamin B6 (approximately 50 mg a day-also present in the Energy Revitalization System by Enzymatic Therapy) can also help you to get pregnant. This is especially true if one has irregular periods or absent periods or inappropriate production of breast milk outside of one's period.
3. Be sure your iron levels are adequate. A blood test (a ferritin level combined with an iron level and iron binding capacity) will tell you this. Unfortunately, doctors are trained to say the iron is normal if your ferritin level is at least 9 ng/ml. Although a ferritin level of 9 shows you have enough iron to prevent anemia, one can have infertility from ferritin levels less than 40. Because of this, I would look at your ferritin test results yourself and make sure the level is at least 40 ng per ml. In a study of women with hair loss with ferritin levels less than 40, seven women who also had infertility became pregnant within 7 months when put on iron. If for some reason you are unable to get your ferritin level checked, it is not unreasonable to take iron (e.g. Chromagen FA 1 tablet a day) for 7 months. Take it on an empty stomach and with at least 200 mg of Vitamin C. Do not take it with in 6 hours of thyroid hormone therapy, or you will not absorb the thyroid. I also would take iron if the percent saturation of iron (calculated from the iron & percent saturation tests noted above) is under 22%.
4. If one's thyroid is low, and this is frequently the case even with normal blood tests, a very low dose of thyroid hormone will often result in people getting pregnant. If you have a tendency to constipation, cold intolerance, dry skin and thin hair, and/or temperatures which run under 98.2_ during the day, there is a good chance your thyroid may be slightly underactive despite normal blood tests. In the absence of underlying heart disease, a trial of a low dose of thyroid hormone (e.g. Armour Thyroid 1/2 grain a day) may help you get pregnant and has a low risk of causing problems. You might have to fight with your doctor a bit to get them to try this for you, but it is worth it. If you have the symptoms I mentioned, remind your doctor that the best endocrinologists stress that it is important to treat the patient and not the blood test. Something he or she might want to remember is that each time we come up with a new thyroid blood test we find a large number of people with an underactive thyroid that the old test missed. There is a very high probability that our current tests are still missing many people with this disease. Do not take iron within six hours of thyroid supplements or the iron will prevent absorption of the thyroid hormone.
5. Research by William Jeffries, M.D., an emeritus professor of endocrinology at Case Western Reserve University, has shown that some women's difficulty getting pregnant can be overcome by taking a low dose of cortisol (Cortef). Although cortisol in high doses for prolonged periods can be very toxic, taking Cortef 5 mg twice a day for 2 to 3 months is unlikely to cause major problems in the absence of high blood pressure or a family history of diabetes. His experience is this can often result in people with infertility getting pregnant as well (although he uses 5 mg 4 times a day). This is especially true with polycystic ovaries (Stein-Leventhal syndrome). 6-Avoid a high protein diet. An animal study conducted at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine has linked high protein diets to impaired pregnancy and less viable offspring. The researchers fed half of their study mice a diet of 25 percent protein (typical daily Atkins' protein consumption) and the other half 14 percent protein (normal protein consumption) for four weeks before mating them. Only one third of the mouse mothers on the high-protein diet were able to become pregnant, compared to 70% in the normal diet group. The researchers then transferred 174 mice embryos from both groups of mice to surrogate mice fed a normal diet. Only 36 percent of the high protein moms' embryos developed into fetuses, compared to 70 percent in the control group. The study results were presented European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.