In the past few decades, the healthcare sector has seen advancements by leaps and bounds. Not only concerning the facilities provided, but also from the standpoint of technology and breakthroughs, fertility treatments and assisted reproduction methods like IVF (in-vitro fertilization) have seen some major headway. For couples everywhere, these techniques take them a step closer to their lifelong dream of having a kid.
But what if there was a way to boost your fertility naturally? Something you could do to increase your chances of conception? Well, here are a few simple tips that go a long way in enhancing your fertility.
The most important tip is to maintain good body circulation. Sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy work timings, stress, illnesses, and other commitments make us ignore our own body, and lack of regular exercise and unhealthy food habits add to the problem. Amidst all this, our body doesn’t get the required nutrition, which in turn hampers fertility.
It is imperative that you follow a healthy lifestyle, avoid stress, and exercise regularly – even if it is something as basic as a walk or a jog. This ensures good oxygen supply throughout the body, helps in detoxification, and revitalizes your body.
While we are on the subject of healthy living, it is also important for women to keep their weight in check while trying to conceive. Being underweight or overweight imbalances your hormones causing issues like PCOS, which lead to weight gain, and hamper conception. Being underweight doesn’t give enough nutrition to your body to carry the baby to term, and can result in miscarriages. Hence, maintaining an appropriate weight according to your medical chart is vital while trying to have a baby. Other than this, women must keep tabs on when they ovulate. This can be done by noting down thermal spikes in the BBT(Basal Body temperature) which are a clear proof that your body is ovulating. This makes it the ideal time during the month to try to conceive.
Surprisingly, what many people don’t know is that dental health can also affect fertility. Dentists have found that having gum diseases has a direct correspondence with infertility. So don’t go ignoring your dentist’s appointments and take good care of your teeth.
For men, it is advisable to avoid saunas, hot baths, and extremely tight clothing. Even working with a laptop on your lap for extended periods of time is harmful, as it affects sperm production and motility rates. Hot baths or saunas release certain toxins that are harmful to sperm production. Also, try and avoid any supplements or anabolic steroids; these have been known to cause infertility when used over a long duration.
Couples should consider reducing their alcohol and caffeine intake, and quit smoking. Smoking in women ages the ovaries by almost ten years, and reduces the sperm production and stamina in men. These symptoms aren’t conducive while trying to have a baby.
If in spite of following all these tips, you still have problems conceiving, then maybe it is the time to get an expert opinion. Consult your doctor who’ll examine you and probably suggest a couple of preliminary tests figure out where the problem lies. Based on the reports, he may suggest certain fertility treatments to you.
It could be the case that the sperm count or sperm motility is low or completely zero in case of men, or the woman’s ovaries do not produce a sufficient number of eggs to be fertilized, or maybe the uterus is not a hospitable environment and kills the embryos thus formed resulting in miscarriages.
Either way, for women above 35 or 40, who’ve been trying to get pregnant for months without success, it is probably the right time to consult a fertility specialist. With age, the production of eggs reduces in the ovaries thus causing fertility issues.
A variety of fertility treatments exist, and sometimes, just taking medications solves the problem. If not, there are other assisted reproduction techniques such as artificial insemination, or ICSI(Inter-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection), and assisted hatching, in which a chemical is introduced in the female’s uterus to increases the chances of the embryo getting implanted in the uterus lining. Then there’s also IVF, which is usually performed when all other options of conception have failed or are unlikely to give favorable results. In IVF, the female’s egg or eggs are removed from her ovaries and fertilized with the male sperm in a laboratory. The fertilized egg then undergoes culture for a few days before the embryo is inserted back into the uterus.
To sum it up, living a healthy, active lifestyle and avoiding excesses in alcohol, coffee and cigarettes go a long way in ensuring good fertility rates. Taking good care of your body, having sex regularly during the female’s ovulation periods, and following the above tips should ensure that you have a successful conception, and in turn, a healthy baby.