Stress can affect every area of a person’s life. Lifestyle changes, deaths, illness, injuries, personal conflicts, and any number of other things can create stress. The body responds to stress in a variety of ways.

When you are stressed, your organs begin to work extra hard to help defend your body from what it perceives as a threat. Your blood pressure rises, your palms sweat, and your skin becomes clammy. If you have regular, sustained, or chronic stress, it can negatively affect your sleeping patters, and can lead to serious issues like depression. In addition, there is some evidence that stress can even interfere with fertility in some cases.

Research shows that extreme stress can interfere with or disrupt normal ovulation for women. Stress can suppress the hormones that are needed for ovulation to occur, making ovulation come later on in a woman’s cycle or, rarely, causing her to miss ovulating at all during a cycle. For men, stress can actually lead to a lower sperm count. However, recent research suggests that the role that stress plays in affecting fertility is relatively rare and almost always minor.

Certainly, problems with fertility can cause stress. For many couples who are trying to conceive, it can be difficult to pin down the cause of their fertility problems. Because they are already stressed by the time they realize that they have fertility problems, it can be easy to attribute those fertility problems to their stress. It is, therefore, extremely important that couples who are trying to conceive work on stress reduction, not only in case stress is causing their fertility problems, but also to eliminate stress as the possible cause of their fertility problems so that a correct diagnosis can be made.

Another role that stress can play in fertility has to do with sexual desire and sexual performance. Stress has been proven to cause issues of erectile dysfunction in men, and can certainly lead to a decreased sex drive in both men and women. Being too stressed out to try to make a baby can certainly affect your fertility as well.

• Can Stress Affect My Chances of Getting Pregnant?
• Can Stress Affect My Chances of Getting Pregnant?
• Can Depression Play a Role in My Fertility?
• Does Weight Play a Role In Fertility?
• Do Hormones Play a Role in Fertility?
• Will My Age Play a Factor In Getting Fertility Treatments?
• What Factors Play A Role For Conception To Occur?
• How Does Progesterone Play a Part in Fertility?
• How does smoking affect fertility?
• Can Stress Affect a Home Pregnancy Test Results?
• Illegal Drugs and Their Affect on Your Fertility
• What is a Luteal Phase and What Role Does it Play in Infertility?

This entry was posted under Fertility Issues.