You may have recently stepped in for a fertility consultation and found yourself surprised at just how much of the conversation focused on your daily life more than anything else. When people usually walk in for such appointments, they expect to hear about tests, timelines, and all the next important steps they need to take. But from a doctor’s perspective, all of that actually comes second to how you eat, sleep, and live your life in general.
That said, if you’ve been wondering how different aspects of your life are affecting your fertility and what you should do about it, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s go deeper into this topic and figure out what areas of your life may just be working against your fertility.
How our stress levels affect the reproductive system
The thing that confuses me about stress and fertility is just how interconnected they are. Some people either think the former is the whole problem, while others think that it barely matters at all. Here’s what actually happens: Chronic stress tends to release a hormone known as cortisol in our bodies. When this hormone is consistently elevated, it can interfere with the hormones that regulate ovulation, disrupting communication between the brain and the ovaries.
In women, this manifests as irregularity in menstrual cycles, and in men, it suppresses the production of testosterone and reduces sperm quality. Even research backs this up, with a lot of papers suggesting that not only does high stress levels lead to longer time for a successful pregnancy, but also cause lower success rates with fertility treatment. What’s worse is that for a lot of couples, their main source of stress may actually be the fertility journey itself – with every negative result, every failed cycle, and every pointed comment from society only leading to more frustration.
If you’re feeling stressed about all this or another aspect of your life, the first thing the doctor will tell you is to bring it under control with deliberate effort. Give techniques like mindfulness, yoga, therapy, journaling, and simple outdoor activities a try – for a lot of people, one or a combination of these techniques can do wonders in lowering stress levels. Though lowering your stress levels may not be a guarantee of a successful pregnancy, it will, at the very least, improve your chances by quite a bit and protect your mental health in the months to come.
Can sleep also affect your chances of getting pregnant?
Visit any good fertility clinic in London, and the first query they’ll raise is just how well you’ve been sleeping lately. As with stress, our sleep patterns and quality play a much bigger role in our fertility than most realise. The reason is that this is when many of our hormones are regulated in the body. This also includes the reproductive group – hormones like luteinising hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, and prolactin. If your sleep is poor, the efficiency and activity of these hormones are directly damaged.
Women who sleep less than seven hours every night, have irregular sleep schedules, or are shift workers have been associated with having lower fertility rates. The same goes for men, for whom poor sleep quality directly leads to reduced testosterone levels and lower sperm concentration. Given that sperm tend to regenerate over roughly 74 days, chronic sleep deprivation will have a compounding effect over time.
All that is to say, sleep is just as important as your stress levels. You need to treat this as a genuine priority every single day, and not something that you can catch up on the weekends. Even simple things like maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, sleeping in a cool, dark room, and limiting screen time before bed will go a long way toward helping you and your partner on your fertility journey.
What should your diet and weight look like for healthy fertility?
Let’s talk weight first, as neither being overweight nor being underweight is going to help you in matters of fertility. Both of these extremes tend to disrupt hormonal balance that, again, affects ovulation in women and sperm production in men. If you’re on the heavier side, take note of your body fat percentage. Excess body fat can increase your oestrogen levels far beyond what’s healthy for the reproductive cycle. But if your body weight is on the far lower end, the hormonal imbalance may suppress ovulation in its entirety. When trying for a baby, even a slight weight change of five to ten per cent will increase your chances by a lot, so try to incorporate a good combination of exercise and diet well before getting started with any treatments.
Speaking of diet, the Mediterranean approach is absolutely the best eating pattern to try, often associated with good fertility outcomes. It’s the focus on vegetables, whole grains, legumes, healthy fats, and moderate fish intake that can support stable blood sugar, reduce inflammation, and provide the antioxidants needed to protect both egg and sperm quality.
This is also the best place to talk about alcohol and smoking. If you’re engaging with either of those, stop for a while. Smoking can easily damage the quality of your eggs long-term and deplete your ovarian reserve itself. It’s not safe for men either, as it can damage their sperm motility and DNA integrity. Alcohol, on the other hand, can disrupt hormone production in both men and women even at modest levels. These cases should be enough proof that it’s best to eliminate both from your life in their entirety when trying to conceive – if a single puff or glass can ruin your chances, it’s best not to take the risk.
When should you start with professional fertility assistance?
On the off-chance that you haven’t started seeing a doctor already, here’s what you need to know. If you are under the age of 35 and have been trying for at least a year without success, or over 35 and it’s been six months already, it may be high time to seek the help of a fertility expert. While everything discussed above can indeed do wonders for your fertility, none of them will replace a proper consultation when that’s what the situation calls for.
Infertility is a problem that affects roughly one in seven couples across the UK, but what you would not know is that most of these cases tend to have identifiable, treatable causes. The catch is – you need to act fast, as many of the treatment options available, from medication to assisted reproduction, are more effective the sooner you get started. That’s part of the reason why those timings exist.
Don’t forget that a fertility assessment will only be beneficial for you and your partner. It can actually look at your lifestyle and contextualise it against what’s happening in your body, using all the tests and results. In other words, it is much better to seek help than to shoot arrows in the dark by trying different solutions by yourself.
Get the right help as soon as you can
At the end of the day, the things that affect your fertility are the same things that affect your physical and mental health. From one perspective, this is actually good news, as it means the changes most worth making are the ones you’ll benefit from regardless of the outcome. But all your efforts will work best when paired with the right support. So if you haven’t already, sign yourself and your partner up for a fertility test at the very least. That alone will bring a ton of clarity and remove the fog that has been covering the rest of your journey.
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