Posts Categorized: Foods and Recipes for Health

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Guest Post: Fueling Fertility: How Athletes Can Prepare Their Bodies For Conception Through Nutrition

October 16, 2025

This is part one of a series of posts on how athletes can prepare their bodies for conception. Special thanks to Registered Dietician Rebecca Jaspan for sharing her knowledge and expertise! To learn about the East Asian Medicine Perspective, you can check out my article here.

A Guest Post by Rebecca Jaspan, MPH, RD, CEDS, CDCES

For athletes, peak performance is a way of life. But when it’s time to shift focus from podiums to parenthood, the same dedication to training can be a powerful asset—especially when it comes to fertility. Preparing your body for conception isn’t just about tracking cycles; it starts long before that with what’s on your plate.

Whether you’re a competitive runner, a HYROX enthusiast, or a recreational athlete, your nutritional needs are unique—and so are the steps you should take to support reproductive health. In this post, we’ll explore steps athletes, both female and male, can take to optimize their fertility, ensuring that their bodies are not just strong and fit, but also ready to support a healthy pregnancy.

Why Athletes May Struggle with Infertility

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Eating Seeds? Yes! Seed Cycling? Not so much.

July 06, 2021

What is Seed Cycling?

I remember first hearing about seed cycling over 10 years ago as a new acupuncturist. The idea of seed cycling is that you can eat different seeds at different parts of your cycle to optimize your hormone balance. Which seed depends on the unique micronutrients in each one, with certain seeds thought to balance estrogen in the follicular phase (before ovulation) and balance progesterone levels in the luteal phase (after ovulation). The concept of being able to truly use your food as medicine and take control of your own health is really appealing of course! Who wouldn’t want a DIY answer to things like irregular cycles, painful periods, or other hormonal symptoms like premenstrual bloating and acne? Not to mention a little help with fertility?

Seed cycling seems to have surged in popularity on social media, so I wanted to take some time to really dig into the research to see if this is worth doing. Also, as a practitioner of East Asian Medicine (TCM), I am excited to discuss our medicine’s view of seeds and how they’re used, as well as some information on how our medicine would approach hormonal health at different phases of the cycle. Read more

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Late Summer and The Earth Element: Seasonal Wellness

September 03, 2020

Knowing a little about Late Summer and its associated Earth element can help you to optimize your health this time of year and ensure you’re in harmony with the season. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are actually 5 seasons and 5 elements:

  • Autumn (metal)
  • Winter (water)
  • Spring (wood)
  • Summer (fire)
  • Late Summer (earth)
Each season and element has its associated emotions, temperature, organs, flavor and even color. We’re now entering the season of Late Summer, which belongs to the Earth element. Late summer begins mid-August and goes until the Autumn Equinox on September 22nd.

Qualities of Late Summer and the Earth Element:

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Ginger Three Ways: Making Crystallized Ginger, Ginger Tea and Syrup

April 23, 2020

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, ginger is one of the most commonly used “herbs” in our toolkit. In this article, I’ll teach you what it can help with as well as some information about how it’s viewed from a Chinese Herbal standpoint. And as promised, I’ll give you a quick explanation for how to make your own crystallized ginger at home, which will also give you ginger tea and syrup. So. delicious.

As an acupuncturist and herbalist, here are the situations where I recommend ginger tea the most frequently: Read more