Q: I hate the taste of food without salt. Why and how can I cut back?

A: Substituting salt with herbs and spices could be a lifesaver. New research from the Harvard Medical School has indicated that cutting your salt intake to 7g a day will reduce your risk of developing heart disease by 25 per cent. Currently guidelines on daily amounts of salt are 6g – about a teaspoon – which may not sound like much but any more than that is known to contribute to health problems such as hypertension or high blood pressure, kidney damage and strokes.

You also need to bear in mind that one slice of pizza contains around 1 g and even a serving of plain yogurt may contain 0.5 g so it is easy to exceed the recommended amount.

On food labels, you may find salt listed as sodium and to work out the salt content you need to multiply this by 2.5. You do need to stop adding it to your food so get rid of your salt shaker and try using fresh or dried herbs, spices, lemon juice or balsamic vinegar instead.

If you are used to the salty taste give yourself time to adjust by cutting down so you gradually lose your taste for it. If you’ve given up sugar in your drink you’ll understand how this works; your taste buds adjust after a few weeks and when they have adjusted you just don’t want to go back to a cup of tea with sugar as it would taste too sweet. It’s the same with salt. Once you starting cutting down you’ll wonder how on earth you enjoyed eating food that tasted so salty.

Q: I read somewhere that trying too hard to get pregnant can have the opposite effect. Is this true?

A: Many people have the misconception that getting pregnant is easy. But if you’ve been trying to conceive for many months or even years, you don’t need reminding that having children does not come easily for everyone. In fact, each month, a woman has only a twenty to thirty percent chance of conceiving. Most women will conceive within a year of trying but a small percentage of women will still not conceive even after a year of trying.

If you have been trying to conceive for any length of time you have probably been given advice from well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning friends or family. You have likely heard the suggestion that you need to relax and stop trying so hard. Maybe you were told something like this ‘I know this couple who tried to get pregnant for years but as soon as they decided to adopt, guess what she got pregnant.’ All this may make you wonder if there is something after all in the saying that trying too hard really can stop you getting pregnant. Add to this the recent research about the impact of stress on fertility. Some researchers believe that stress significantly impacts fertility and limits the success of assisted conception.

Although stress may have an impact on it is more likely that stress is the result of infertility not the cause. Most couples conceive within a year of trying and for those who don’t there is often an identifiable physical cause. It is also simply not true that fertility improves when you stop trying. The percentage of women getting pregnant after adopting is about 5 percent, which is the same as women who have infertility and do not adopt.

But what about the theory that having too much sex stops you conceiving? It’s another common misconception because the more sex you have when you are trying for a baby the more likely you are to get pregnant. Most experts recommend having sex at least every other day during a woman’s fertile period. It was once suggested that men with low sperm counts abstain from sex prior to ovulation to increase their sperm count. However, recent studies have not shown that abstaining improves sperm count. In fact in men with low sperm counts, the researchers found the volume of semen increased after prolonged abstinence, but the quality got gradually worse the longer the men held back.

To sum up, the difference between a couple that conceives when trying and a couple that does not is not based on how hard they try and suggesting that not trying increases your chances of getting pregnant only adds to the frustration of couples trying to conceive. Exactly how do you try less when you desperately want a baby?  For help with  boosting fertility see my book ‘Natural Solutions to Infertility’.

Q: Do complementary therapies hamper IVF?

A: A recent study carried out by Cardiff University has found that women who combine complementary therapy with IVF treatment are 30% less likely to fall pregnant than those who undergo IVF alone.

While this headline-making statement implies that complementary therapy somehow interferes with the IVF process, this does not mean couples should not seek help from complementary therapies during fertility treatments. Apart from the fact that numerous studies indicate potential benefits there could also be alternate explanations for these findings.

Of the 818 Danish women who took part in the Cardiff study almost 1/3 undertook some form of complementary therapy along with their IVF treatment; with reflexology and nutritional supplements being the most popular. It was found that these women had more fertility treatment and a lower rate of pregnancy than those who used no form of complementary medicine at all. However, the research also found that those who complemented IVF with alternative therapies had experienced more medical fertility intervention prior to the start of the study and were also significantly more stressed about the IVF process and its possible outcomes.

It is indeed possible that the findings of the study simply show that the women who were having more trouble conceiving prior to the cycles of IVF started to become more stressed about their fertility and looked to complementary therapies as traditional methods alone did not seem to be working.

It is also possible that the elevated levels of stress reported by those who chose to use a form of complementary medicine were responsible for their inability to conceive successfully and as a consequence drove them to use alternative treatments in an attempt to relax and facilitate the process.

While it is unlikely that physical therapies such as reflexology interfere with IVF, previous research has found that some herbal supplements such as St john’s wort, Echinacea and ginkgo biloba may have an adverse effect on fertility so this could all help to explain the findings.

Finally, the Cardiff University research is preliminary and there are plans to monitor the women over a 5 year period. Until we know more, complementary therapies during fertility treatment should not be abandoned – there is too much evidence of their beneficial efforts.