Inhibitor of Pregnancy? Stress, Big Time

I remember when I was trying to get pregnant being told by everyone that all I had to do was relax.  That alone stressed me out.  Every procedure I failed, I'd tell myself it was because I didn't relax enough.  Really great for the cortisol level.

 Now it's turning out that stressing out and fertility are linked. Well, infertility.  A new study has found, according to Deborah Netburn at The Los Angles Times, that stressed out women do have more difficulty getting pregnant than women with less stress, according to a new study.  In fact, 29 percent more, Fox news reports. This, of course, contradicts earlier studies that say they don't!
From 2005 to 2009, researchers followed 401 reproductively healthy couples who were trying to get pregnant.  Over a period of 12 months, researchers recorded each couple’s time-to-pregnancy and observed that by five to six months into the study, the couples who had yet to conceive were those with the highest levels of chronic stress.
“When we get to couples starting to have problems [conceiving], stress levels really seem to differ from those who get pregnant [quickly],” lead study author Courtney Lynch, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center told FoxNews.com.
"It affects a woman's ability to ovulate every month and therefore her ability to become pregnant," Dr. Taraneh Shirazian, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, told CBS News. "For example, in athletes who often don't get their period for long stretches of time, they have difficulty getting pregnant."
The scientists defined infertility as a failure to become pregnant after 12 months of unprotected intercourse. During the study, 347 women became pregnant and 54 did not, The New York Times noted, or 87 percent of the women conceived while 13 percent did not.
When I finally did get pregnant with my son, I had just come back from a short vacation with my husband.  But before you start making any guesses about relaxation, my mother-in-law was along, too!

 

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