Causes of Infertility: Health and Lifestyle Concerns for Women

• NUTRITION

What you eat may affect your menstrual cycle, ovulation, and overall hormonal balance. That’s why you should consume a healthy and well-balanced diet. Plus, diets that are either too high or low in calories can signifi cantly affect your overall body weight. Extreme weight loss or weight gain may affect your menstrual cycle and fertility.

• EXERCISE

Regular and vigorous exercise can change your menstrual cycle. In extreme cases, your menstrual periods may stop completely. This problem seems to be especially common among long-distance runners. However, women who exercise to excess and dramatically reduce their body weight and fat content may also experience a lack of menstrual periods. And without your menstrual cycle, you will not be able to ovulate and conceive.

• BODY WEIGHT

Being overweight by even 10 to 15 percent above normal can overload your body with estrogen. This extra estrogen is produced within the fatty tissue and can dramatically change your hormone balance. In many cases, obese women ovulate irregularly, if at all. Lack of body fat may also result in irregular periods and infertility. A woman who is underweight by 10 to 15 percent has less fat storage and therefore less estrogen. Although it may vary from woman to woman, most medical experts agree that a woman needs a body fat content of approximately 22 percent to allow for the normal hormonal balance and subsequent ovulation process.

• CHRONIC DISEASE

Medical conditions such as lupus, diabetes, thyroid disease, and rheumatoid arthritis have been shown to reduce your fertility. If you have one of these medical conditions, it’s imperative that you take your prescribed medication and be under the care of a qualifi ed health care provider. This is especially true when you are trying to become pregnant. Cancer may or may not affect fertility. However, the cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiation, almost always will. If possible, talk with a fertility expert before starting your chemotherapy or radiation. It’s often possible to work with your team of doctors and come up with a plan to safeguard or at least improve your future fertility.