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DELIGHT: A study has revealed that if you want to fall pregnant, going to a sunny place could be the answer. Picture: PRNewsFoto / Liberty Travel

London: Couples trying for a baby should take a sunshine holiday – and not just because it may put them in a more romantic mood.

Sunlight boosts fertility in both men and women by increasing their levels of vitamin D, a study has found.

Known as the sunshine vitamin, vitamin D is also key to balancing sex hormones in women and improving sperm count in men, researchers say.

The findings mean some couples may be undergoing unnecessary and costly fertility treatment when spending time in the sun could be the answer.

For women, vitamin D helps boost levels of the female sex hormones progesterone and oestrogen by 13 and 21 percent respectively, regulating menstrual cycles and making conception more likely.

Fathers-to-be increase their fertility by going into the sun, too – because vitamin D is essential for the healthy development of each sperm’s nucleus. It also increases levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, improving a man’s libido, according to the review of several studies, published in the European Journal of Endocrinology.

The vitamin’s effect on both male and female sex hormones may explain why conception rates fall in the winter and peak in the summer in northern European countries, say the researchers at the Medical University of Graz in Austria.

In their own study of nearly 2 300 men they also found that levels of testosterone and vitamin D peaked in August and were lowest in March, just after the winter.

Women have been found to ovulate less – and their eggs have a reduced chance of implanting in the womb – in the winter months.

Fertility problems affect one in seven couples in the UK. In four out of 10 cases, the difficulty lies with the man.

Although vitamin D can be obtained in small quantities by eating oily fish, eggs and liver, about 80 percent of the amount the body needs is obtained via a chemical process that happens when the UVB rays in sunlight are absorbed by the skin. – Daily Mail