Preventing Infertility
What changes in my lifestyle may increase my fertility?
The best way to increase fertility is to avoid infertility. So, the best way to make sure one's fallopian tubes do not become blocked is to try to avoid sexually transmitted disease by practicing safe sex. Women who do not ovulate because they have become overweight should try to lose weight and try to come down to a normal body size. Or, alternately, those who are underweight need to gain weight back into a healthy range to allow ovulation to occur. Other than that, the best thing to do is not to tempt the biological clock. There's no question that the risk of infertility increases with a woman's age. And, so, having children at a younger age is more likely to be successful than waiting to have them at an older age. Although, I would not say that means that women should try to have babies in their late teens or early twenties, as they used to several generations ago. Probably, late twenties or early thirties, is perfectly okay – from the perspective of the biological clock anyway – where the probability of infertility is concerned.
Is it true that "relaxing" about my fertility will improve my chances?
Relaxing is always a good idea. It's always a good idea to be relaxed and to not be stressed because the stress is bad for you. It's bad for your heart, it's bad for your heartburn and it's not clear whether it is bad for your infertility, but it may very well be. The trouble is, how do you get rid of your stress? The patients worry about being stressed, and they're stressing about being stressed. So it seems like a vicious cycle. The best information that we have is some indication from the mind-body institutes and the mind-body kinds of programs that have been set up which seem to suggest that the patients who go through a mind-body program have an increased probability of being able to get pregnant. But these have never been shown in a controlled way, in a scientific study. So I would say this is a perfectly good alternative for young couples who have time, for whom the biological clock is not as much of an issue, and who are motivated to try to avoid regular fertility medications. By all means, I think this is a very good way to go. Another holistic therapy, if you will, is acupuncture. And acupuncture also seems to help people relax and helps them be in tune with their own body and in tune with their own infertility. So it's very hard to say anything bad about that, other than to say don't count on it as the only method of treating your infertility, particularly then if biological clock is starting to play a role—meaning for women over the age of 35. I worry so much that someone will do mind-body and will do acupuncture for five years and go from the age of 37 all the way to 42 before they finally come back to the traditional fertility type therapy. But reducing stress—always good. Does it make a difference in fertility? We're not so sure.
What some myths about preventing infertility?
Infertility is one of those topics that everybody has an opinion about. And, of course, it's intensely emotional and intensely personal. And, for this reason, it, I think, is fraught with more myths than its share in the world of medicine. A common one is: you simply have to relax and then it'll happen for you. This is not true. Whereas stress reduction may be a good idea in general, no-one has ever showed that just relaxing leads to fertility. And couples of course that happen to get pregnant on vacation, happen to get pregnant that way because the probability simply came up. They're no more likely to get pregnant on vacation than at other times. Another myth is that if you simply adopt, then you will become pregnant. The reality is that when someone gets pregnant after a long time of trying, whatever the last thing was that happened just prior to them getting pregnant is going to be given the credit for that miraculous conception. But, in fact, these are not associated with an increased probability of getting pregnant. Some women worry that if they smoke this will decrease their fertility. And, indeed, you can show that there are all kinds of toxic stuff in cigarette smoke. There is nothing good about cigarette smoke. Not one thing. So whatever you look for, if you think it's worse in smokers, you're absolutely right. Whether it's lung disease or, or any other kind of disease, or whether it's infertility, in smokers, it's always worse. But, just remember, there are huge numbers of smokers in some of the countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world. And, of course, the population as a whole continues to be able to reproduce. So it's not an absolute. Alcohol ingestion, caffeine ingestion, all of these things have been suggested to play a role in infertility. But none of those have been shown to have a major impact. Perhaps, it'd be wise to say everything should be in moderation and any kind of extreme is going to be bad for you, regardless of what it is. Perhaps even, too many vitamins or too many health foods could potentially be bad. But, of course, we don't know any of those things. I would simply say maintenance of a, of a healthy lifestyle, a normal level of activity, a normal body weight is about as far as we know in terms of what can specifically impact infertility from a lifestyle perspective.
