In a series of events offered exclusively to health food retailers this autumn, naturopathic doctor Dr Holly Lucille explored the important role nutrition and supplementation can have on fertility.
The talks were part of Viridian Nutrition’s education tour – The Fertility Crisis, Nutritional Interventions from Pre-conception to Childhood – which took place over five days from 30 September and saw hundreds of retailers attended lectures in London, Manchester, Exeter, Edinburgh and Dublin.
Dr Lucille gave presentations on supplemental and lifestyle interventions to improve fertility and explored essential nutrition for men and women starting their pre-conception and pregnancy journey.
“When you can step back and understand the multiple things that are contributing to the crisis, diet, lifestyle, lack of proper optimized nutrients, and our ever increasing toxic environment, you realize you can really help people do something about it and make a difference,” she explains. “Talking with retailers about this was very exciting, as I know they have the ability to now educate and assist their customers with an issue that can have an impact to their lives.”
Viridian’s technical director Aimee Benbow believes that health food retailers will play a key role in addressing conception difficulties, which now affect around one in seven couples in the UK. “These statistics are startling and confirm we are in a fertility crisis. We need to look at nutritional and lifestyle interventions to break this devastating cycle. More importantly, health food stores are pivotal to improving the fertility chances of women and men because of their nutritional knowledge and expertise they offer. It’s an important subject matter which can attract customers into the store. It is therefore imperative for us to support health food stores with evidence-based products and training.”
Image: L-R, Dr Holly Lucille, Aimee Benbow
