Water won't add weight

Q: My girlfriend is on a diet and used to drink a lot of diet colas. Recently, she has switched to fruit-flavoured sparkling water. We presume this is healthier. Do you agree? Dr Rose writes: For dieters who are trying to limit their caloric intake, carbonated, distilled or mineralised waters are good choices. They have no calories or artificial additives.

However, in some of the 'naturally flavoured' bottled water preparations, extra sugar in the form of sucrose or fructose is added, making it a high caloric beverage. Some contain more than 100 calories per serving.

If your girlfriend is counting her calories carefully, she needs to read the nutritional labels of her prepared food and beverage items, if available. To avoid hidden calories, my advice is to stick with simple food items rather than those with added flavours. Q: My wife and I have been trying without success for three years to conceive. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars but our doctor can find nothing physically wrong. Our parents think our infertility is due to the high level of stress both of us are under. Do you think this is possible? Can stress actually cause infertility? Dr Rose writes: The issue of stress and infertility is a complex one. Some experts and isolated studies do suggest that both men and women under stress have more difficulties conceiving. This is mostly due to imbalances of hormonal release due to the effects of stress on a gland in the brain called the hypothalamus.

The hypothalamus gland regulates the timing, regularity and the amount of various reproductive hormones.

In women, this hormonal imbalance can lead to a number of conditions including variations in the levels of estrogen and progesterone which can result in failure of the ovaries to ovulate or the inability of the fertilised embryo to mature and implant in the uterine wall.

In males under stress, researchers have reported that the number of viable healthy sperm can decrease significantly.