TTC? See 5 Bad Habits to Kick to Improve Your Fertility

Brittany Null

Lifestyle choices have huge impact on fertility. Find five bad habits you should kick to improve your chances:

1. Don’t stay up late

We’ve all done it, stayed up too late at least once for something but some people do this every night. It’s something that some people cannot help due to insomnia. However, some do choose to stay up of their own free will. This can put pressure on your fertility. If you are not getting enough sleep then your body is not rejuvenating the way that a proper healthy body should. Experts say that the average adult should get between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. Are you reaching this number? It’s something you don’t think about but it does cause a lot of strain on the body.

Not entirely but not so much intake in a day. This tends to go hand in hand with the sleeping habits. If you aren’t sleeping enough then you are tired the following day and require those extra boosts of caffeine to help pull you through the day. Caffeine is something that you must cut back on during pregnancy and prior to pregnancy if you’re trying to conceive. I believe personally that cutting the caffeine and replacing it with herbal teas or decaffeinated coffee made a world of difference. While caffeine doesn’t completely deplete your fertility it does decrease the opportunity of full term pregnancy and increases the option of a miscarriage.

At the gym 7 days a week? Work out for 2 hours a day? Not exercise at all? These are major factors to becoming fertile. If you over-do it you’re less likely to be fertile. If you under-do it you’re also less likely to be fertile. You need to find what’s “just right” for you and your schedule. Less than 7 hours a week is the “proper” amount to exercise if you’re trying to conceive. If you exercise too much it can cause imbalances in your body for both men and women. This is why most Olympic athletes don’t have children and have infertility problems. The same goes with not exercising at all. You have to be willing to work for what you want. Whether that means taking a 45 minute walk 4 times a week or hitting the gym for one hour 4 days a week, you have to know what’s right for you. Eat healthy, exercise healthy, live healthy.

I really find it hard to talk about this because in all reality I procrastinate a lot when it comes to certain aspects of my life. Children were not one of those. A woman’s fertility begins to die down at age 27 and a man’s at age 40. If you wait until you are 37 and try to conceive your odds are stacked against you. You’ve waited too long. While this does happen for women quickly sometimes, it’s rare for a woman to get pregnant without assistance within the first 6-12 months of trying after the age of 35. If you are 27+ and have tried for over a year you may need to seek medical attention.

This seems like one of those moments but some people are unaware that everything they do while trying to conceive actually affects the outcome. A drink occasionally won’t affect your fertility but excessive drinking can. If you have 4 alcoholic beverages a week it can decrease your chances of getting pregnant. Cut back to one a week, or maybe only special occasions. This holds true for men as well. The alcohol can decrease their active sperm count thus affecting the odds of getting pregnant.

Source: Conceiveeasy