If you have paid attention to recent media coverage on stress and IVF outcome, you may well have observed some conflicting reports.
It is well known that people who smoke cigarettes are at increased risk of suffering from a variety of diseases such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, cancer, heart disease or stroke
Recent statistics have demonstrated that up to 11% of couples have difficulties conceiving. The female partners often are the ones taking an active role in seeking fertility management, as indicated by the disproportionately higher frequency of initial fertility consultations with gynecologists, whether initiated by the female partners or by their primary care physicians, rather than with a urologist. While various cultural and social norms have led the public to assume that fertility is primarily a “female issue”, the reality is that only about a third of fertility problems in couples are due to pure female-factor, while another third is due to pure male-factor and another third a combination of both male- and female-factors. Thus male-factor infertility is found in over half of all cases of couples experiencing infertility. ...
Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the villi which line the small intestine and prevents the absorption of nutrients, vitamins and minerals from food. Celiac disease is usually thought of as an allergy to gluten. This is because when celiacs eat foods containing gluten, the villi are flattened by the huge influx of antibodies produced by the immune system in the body’s attempt to digest the gluten.1 Without healthy villi, a person becomes malnourished in spite of eating a healthful diet.
When we decided to start a family, we tried for several months and…nothing happened. Everyone around me seemed to be pregnant, and I was not. Some of my friends were having difficulty conceiving, but I didn’t think that could happen to me – my maternal grandmother had twelve children! I started panicking, “What will I do if I cannot become pregnant?” ...
Women who put off trying to have children until their mid-thirties worsen their chances for pregnancy and motherhood. ...Reproductive aging in women is a continuous process that begins prior to birth and ends with menopause. Recent studies have suggested that by age 25 women lose about 80% of the eggs they were born with. The average woman will have lost 95% of her eggs by age 35. Only 5% of this loss is due to smoking, stress or body mass. ...
Whether you love it or hate it, fish is a food that cannot be ignored when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. It seems that more and more reports from the scientific community are showing how good fish is for us, and medical experts are urging us all to consume more of the omega 3 essential fatty acids found in fish. But what about fertility? Should those of us who are trying to conceive be taking fish oil supplements? ...
Worldwide, much is made of obesity and the significant health problems associated with it. Weight excess and obesity are related to a multitude of health consequences, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, osteoathritis, and reproductive dysfunction - most commonly manifested as irregular menstruation and infertility. However, being underweight also has significant consequences both to general and also reproductive health. Worldwide, low body weight and malnutrition are obviously a significant cause of death, but even in Canada, chronic underweight state and anorexia are also associated with [...]