Can Your Diet Increase Your Chances of Having Twins?

It may seem like a myth, but recent studies show that your diet can actually impact your ability to conceive twins. As a mother of twins, I find this fascinating. Did what I eat cause me to have twins? Twins are either identical or fraternal. Unfortunately, you cannot do anything to increase your chances of having identical twins. Identical twins occur when the embryo that is formed splits into two embryos. Currently, there's no research that shows you can cause this to happen on your own. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, are caused by hyper-ovulation - when your body releases more than one egg and both are fertilized. Until recently, unless you were using fertility drugs, it was believed there wasn't much you could do on your own to increase the number of eggs you released and thus your chances of having twins.

Now, women who want to increase their chances of having twins have some hope. In the May 2006 issue of The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, there is a report that concludes that eating dairy products increases a woman's chance of having twins.(1) The study was done by Dr. Gary Steinman of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. In it, he studied three groups of women:

Vegans (People who eat no animal products)
Vegetarians (People who don't eat meat, but will eat dairy products)
Omnivores (People who eat meat and dairy products)

The results of the study are actually quite astounding, if you ask me. It showed that vegetarians and omnivores were five times more likely to have twins than vegans. Dr. Steinman concluded that a hormone given to cows to increase their milk production causes women who drink milk from those cows to hyper-ovulate. So if you want twins, eat more dairy!

If you are not a fan of dairy products, you could do like the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria, Africa and eat lots of yams, a type of sweet potato. This tribe has the highest rate of multiple births of any group of people in the entire world.(2) Scientists say that it is because yams contain a high level of a chemical that is similar to Estrogen, and this may be causing hyper-ovulation.

I suppose you could eat a whole bunch of yams and dairy products together and then gain weight - women who are overweight are also more likely to have twins. Of course that doesn't mean you really should go out and try to gain weight - not only with that make you unhealthy, but it will make carrying your twins more difficult.

Though these studies show that you are more likely to have twins if you include high amounts of yams or dairy, there are obviously no guarantees that you will have twins. The "usual" factors still need to be in your favor - having twins that run in your family (and they don't need to skip a generation), being older when you get pregnant and fertility treatments are still the way to go if you want to have twins. Or you could be like my sister and me, who fall into none of these categories and we were both lucky enough to have a set of "spontaneous" twins. Then again, we do both like milk.

1. How to Have Twins: Dairy Diet
Don't Be a Vegan: Drink Milk to Have Twins
By Pamela Prindle Fierro, About.com
http://multiples.about.com/od/howtohavetwins/qt/howtohavetwinso.htm

2. Fun Facts about Twins and Multiples
http://www.allbaby.com/babyinfo/multiples.htm