My wife has endometriosis.  We had our first baby by IVF, before we were paleo.  However, we tried naturally for six months for the second baby without success, and ended up using IVF again.  I'd say that paleo doesn't cure endometriosis, or at least if it does, it takes more than a few months.

My wife's second pregnancy, while paleo, involved less kicking by the baby, though there's still quite a lot.  I'd guess that babies have sugar rushes even in the womb, which paleo helps moderate.

I'm pretty sure paleo improves the quality of breast milk, though we don't have any nonpaleo breast feeding examples to compare to.  In particular, I suspect it helps brain growth, looking at my daughter's charts from that period.

slightly off topic but....I read a great article a while back (trying to google it again) that hinted toward the fact of so much infertility in the adults who are now aged 20-45.  Infertility was at an all time high.....the author had some data about the fact that soy formula was introduced when these adults were babies.  It went on to talk about how estrogenic soy is for humans in large quantities and that the hormones would be all messed up on these babies right from the start and affect development of reproductive hormone pathways.

I'll keep looking for it.  It's an interesting theory!  Could make a lot of sense too?  I mean infertility has always been around but it's VERY prevalent here anyways (north america).  I'm the only one out of my circle of friends and coworkers who conceived first time trying.  I have a couple who conceived within 6 months and MANY who took over a year of temp taking and what not.  My SIL has been trying for 7 years and conceived but can't carry, and had one baby die after birth.  It's a heartbreaking problem for sure! 

true...but most of the girls I hang around with...we all had kids in our mid twenties.  Tons of infertility at that age.  Lots of endometriosis.

I have another update, specifically regarding infertility due to endometriosis.

As mentioned above, my wife had infertility caused by endometriosis.  For the benefit of those who arrive at this thread through a web search, we were infertile for several years, and finally had our first child in 2008 on our fourth IVF cycle.  We discovered and started a paleo diet the month the child was born.  When my wife's periods returned, they were no longer painful.  However, we still weren't able to get pregnant naturally, and again resorted to IVF, one cycle of which resulted in our second child in 2010.

We've always wanted three children and have recently started the process of going through IVF again - a longer process now that my wife is 40.  Meanwhile, we've been trying that "natural" thing again, mostly because if by some miracle it actually worked, we wouldn't have to stop breast feeding the second child.  Well, this morning we got a positive pregnancy test - the first on a natural cycle since we originally started trying to conceive in 2004.

So it looks like paleo will eventually reverse infertility caused by endometriosis, given enough time.

Some caveats are in order.  My wife did have one large endometrioma removed prior to our first IVF.  Also, she has been pregnant twice.  The reason I think it was the paleo diet rather than these other factors is because, with respect to the endometriomectomy, she only got one pain free period afterward, with the pain gradually coming back over the next two periods, and with respect to the pregnancies, I don't think they normally result in menstruation pain going away so completely.  Meanwhile, my wife's menstrual periods are now so painless that her first notice is the spotting, and a number of other women on this site who haven't been pregnant have also seen menstruation pain go away on paleo.

Of course, a positive pregnancy test is not a take home child.  I figure we have about a 50/50 chance, since of the four embryos that implanted during our IVF cycles, two resulted in "take home children".  However, being able to get pregnant in the first place is pretty significant after so many years of infertility, so I thought it was worth a post.

Wow - congratulations Warren! All the best! Yes that is very significant.

I'd be interested to see what the Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective would be on this. When I lived in NZ, I used to see a practitioner who specialised in infertility. She had so much success she even had gynecologists referring patients to her when they'd run out of ideas. She was always big on eating lots of "warming" foods, like hearty meat casseroles, even though she was vegetarian herself.

I agree a lot of the overall (population-wide) increase in infertility is probably mainly due to women leaving child-bearing till they're older. It's something I've talked to my daughters about. Not that I expect them to want to have children, but I want them to understand that if they wait until they're over 30 they may have more trouble conceiving. There seems to be a widespread expectation these days that you should be able to conceive whenever - I've known women who waited till they were over 35 to start trying and then seemed genuinely surprised when they didn't fall pregnant at the drop of a hat. I think the way sex ed is approached in schools is partly responsible - it's all about preventing the twin horrors of pregnancy and STDs       and nothing about understanding fertility over the lifespan.

Warren - I had an infection due to a copper 7 in my mid 20'sand was told I would not be able to have children. I gave up at that point. Within the next 10 years I gave birth to 3 girls - I was 30, 33 and 36 respectively.

You can just never tell.

I can remember reading somewhere about links between low fat and fertility/menstrual problems. Hee's the link to the results of the google search (because I'm lazy):

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=low+fat+infertility&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:{referrer:source?}&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADFA_en&redir_esc=&ei=P7sFTrLkFsf3mAWp69W4DQ

My wife is doing well.  The 6 week ultrasound yesterday showed a fetus with a heartbeat, although it's two or three days behind where we would have expected it to be.  I figure our chances are around two out of three now, since only three of our previous embryos got to this point, of which two survived.