Other Factors

In my last post, Could Your Weight be Contributing to Your Infertility?, I talked about a new study that links obesity to a decrease in fertility. I also shared that I used to struggle with the eating disorder of binge and compulsive overeating. So, I know how hard of a blow my last post might have been to some of you who struggle with your weight.

Unfortunately, if you have an eating disorder like I did, losing weight is not as simple as going to Weight Watchers. Eating disorders are fueled by emotional pain. For me, each time I binged on food, I was "stuffing down" painful emotions that I was not ready to deal with. When I would diet, I would lose the… [more]

Last month, a respected European reproductive medical journal called Human Reproduction published a study that links a woman's obesity to fertility issues. While other studies have shown a correlation between obesity and fertility issues, this study is the first to link obesity to causing issues with pregnancy when the woman is "subfertile" but ovulating normally.

According to the study, obesity can reduce the odds of conception by 4%, and very obese women were 26 to 43% less likely to conceive than women who were not obese. See Obesity Reduces Chances Of Spontaneous Pregnancy In Women Who Are Subfertile But Ovulating Normally for more on this study.

For those of you who already struggle with your weight, I am sure this comes as a huge… [more]

FertilityCommunity.com has an interesting article about whether there is a link between childhood abuse and infertility. As an infertile woman who was abused as a child, the article Unspeakable Realities Entwined: Child Abuse & Infertility jumped out at me.

Let me start by saying that I found it both sad that others have known both pains as well as comforting to know that I am not alone in experiencing both. I have often wondered how much impact the abuse had on my inability to conceive. However, my sister endured the same abuses, and she was able to conceive and give birth to two healthy babies, so I am not sure why my body reacted differently than hers did… [more]

I mentioned last week that I am changing birth control this month. But the landscape keeps changing and I'm glad that there are options to hopefully work for all of us when we need birth control. While trying to get pregnant, I kept thinking about all of the money and all of the years wasted on birth control. But honestly, I think that I would have made the same choices over again. Birth control provided me with a peace of mind that I needed to grow into the person that I am today. If I would have added in the anxiety of wondering if I was pregnant when I wasn't trying to become a mom, I wonder if that growth would have occured. There will now… [more]

I'm starting a new type of birth control method this month, which means that I will be having a period again. With my previous method, an absence of a period was a very pleasant side effect for me. But now that I'm getting into all of the cycling again, I was wondering what foods I should be eating while menstruating. I know consciously the extreme changes my body goes through during the 28 days and I started to think about ways that I could support my body with food. Here is what I found from Women's Health Information Here are some basic dietary guidelines for you to follow during your period to help control your PMS and for better overall health: Be sure to get… [more]

Eating A lot of Beef May Affect Son's Sperm "In sons of 'high beef consumers' (more than seven beef meals/week), sperm concentration was 24.3 percent lower," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the journal Human Reproduction. The team at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York studied data on the partners of 387 pregnant women in five U.S. cities between 2000 and 2005, and on the mothers of the fathers-to-be. Of the 51 men whose mothers remembered eating the most beef, 18 percent had sperm counts classified by the World Health Organization as sub-fertile. "The average sperm concentration of the men in our study went down as their mothers' beef intake went up. But this needs to be followed carefully before… [more]

Eating ice cream, avoiding skim milk could be beneficial to conceiving a baby? This sounds like a study that many women could jump on board with. With a small amount of cost and trauma. If I told my husband that ice cream consumption would help with his part in conception, I'd be scared to think how far he would go to help out! The researchers found that women who ate two or more servings of low-fat dairy foods per day, particularly skim milk and yogurt, increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by more 85 percent compared with women who ate less than one serving of low-fat dairy food per week. "The opposite was true for full-fat dairy foods, particularly whole milk," Chavarro told Reuters Health. Women who ate at… [more]

I found this article, titled Noise pollution causes infertility and insomnia" by Iqbal Choudhry out of Pakistan. Officials from the Punjab Evironmental Protection Agency would like to lower noise pollution levels in the city to 75 decibels maximum, from the 91 decibels that they recorded in certain areas of the city. "Noise is a biological stressor that affects the whole body, raises blood pressure, transforms blood chemistry and imairs hearing," said the Chairperson of the Punjab University's Department of Psychology, Dr. Rukhsana Kausar, while talking to Daily Times on Monday. Dr Kausar said noise is one of the most pervasive pollutants, which also causes insomnia and infertility. She said a person affected by insomnia contracts a variety of behavioural problems such as anxiety, irritability and emotional stress. I know for a… [more]

"Our experienced medical journalist Daniel DeNoon took your questions about fertility issues to specialists. Here's what he found out. " Although this question and answer from www.webmd.com doesn't deal directly with exercise addiction, it does deal with extreme exercise and biking. While reading through the answers, I was surprized to learn some new things. The person writing in was asking if biking and large amounts of exercise can affect male fertility. A couple of doctors submitted their answers and came up with these answers. The first physician gave answers that had to do with high temperatures that can affect sperm and also the use of recreational drugs and binge drinking. Their advice was to have sperm testing done with a reputable testing site. The second physician had this to say, which… [more]

I knew that eating disorders have an effect on fertility. I knew that being overweight and underweight have an effect on fertility. I also know about anorexia and bulimia. But exercise addiction? I hadn't ever heard of it. The whole back page of one of our newspaper segments was devoted to this "dangerous addiction". I found a complementary article on www.active.com titled, "Know the signs of unhealthy exercise addiction" Exercise addiction is like any other addiction. A brain response to exercising that causes the afflicted to deny all areas of life besides exercise. This can lead to being underweight, fatigue and overuse injuries. Also in females it can lead to amenorrhea which disrupts or halts the menstrual cycle. From the above article, here are some… [more]