Eat more fish if you are trying to conceive

If you are trying to get pregnant then a diet rich in seafood could be beneficial, a new research suggests.

According to researchers from Harvard University, couples who consume a lot of seafood tended to have sex more often and conceive faster than other couples.

For the study, researchers analysed the lifestyle of 500 Michigan and Texas couples from the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study for about a year. Participants were asked to record their daily intake of seafood and sexual activity in a daily journal.

About 92 percent of couples who ate seafood more than twice a week were pregnant after 12 months in comparison with 79 percent among couples consuming less seafood, the findings revealed.

Also, when both partners consumed eight or more four-ounce servings per menstrual cycle, sexual intercourse frequency increased by almost 22 percent.

Researchers also found that the odds of couple having sex were 39 percent higher if both partners consumed seafood the same day. "One of the surprising finds was that male intake seemed just as important as the female intake," Dr Audrey Gaskins, a research associate at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told Daily Mail Online. "We often forget about how the male component is just as important as the female component when it comes to conceiving."

Researchers were not quite sure why there was an increase in sexual activity when couples consumed more fish, but Gaskins has some theories.

"There is a popular culture belief that seafood might be an aphrodisiac, but there is really no evidence to suggest that," she said. "Seafood intake could be a marker of couples having a nice dinner together, sharing a dinner together, so it could be a behavioral mechanism at play."