Approximately 10 to 15% of couples around the world are impacted by infertility. Recently, the vital role of the lifestyle factors that plays an important role in the development of infertility has generated an interest. The lifestyle factors that are mutable habits and ways of life can greatly affect on overall health including fertility. Many factors such as when to start a family, nutrition, exercise, weight, psychological stress, environmental exposures etc have considerable effects on fertility. Lifestyle factors such as illicit drug use, smoking, alcohol, and caffeine consumption can be a negative impact on fertility.
It has estimated that the number of infertile people in the world is 15%, particularly in the industrialized nations. Decreasing the percentage of the people affected by infertility has become a top priority for many health organizations in the world. The lifestyles factors are changeable to enhance an overall health and they are ultimately in one’s own hands. They play a crucial role in determining the reproductive health and can be positively or negatively influence the fertility.
The aim of this article is to demonstrate the potential efforts by lifestyle factors on reproductive health for both men and women. While many features of the life cannot be changed or modified, lifestyles can be changed for the well and good reasons.
The Productive Timeline:
The age of both men and women is a considerable factor among others which can affect the fertility. Due to the many reasons of life, many couples are choosing to delay the first child. Fertility increases and decreases over the time in both men and women. Thus the reproductive timeline should be considered when planning to start a family.
Impacts Of Lifestyle factors:
Nutrition
Eating healthy diet can be the best key for maintaining good health. There are certain vitamins and food groups that could have a greater impact on reproductive health than others. Ingredients of the male’s diet can directly make an impact on his fertility. A woman’s diet can ultimately affect her fertility, in particular on ovulation. Having just one piece of meat was correlated with a 32% higher chance of developing ovulatory infertility in woman. If replacing the same with vegetables, it can be protective and safer for health.
Obesity
Recently, the obesity outbreak has become the serious issue all over the world, more particularly in the industrialized nations. The adult obesity has increased to 35.7% in the last few years. The reason for rising numbers in obesity can be the energy-rich diet and insufficient physical exercise. While there are the other numbers of unhealthy factors related to obesity, there can be a significant impact of obesity on male and female fertility.
Exercise
A routine of proper exercise can be beneficial for men. Physically active men ideally exercise at least three times a week for one hour, they typically score higher in all the sperm parameters in comparison to men who does more frequent exercise.
Psychological Impact
Stress is, of course, an eminent part of any society, whether it may be physical, social or psychological. Infertility itself is considered as stressful for the people who are dealing with because of the societal pressure, diagnosis, testings, treatments, failures, unfilled desires, and even the expenses associated or come with it.
Smoking
It is well known that how smoking is injurious to health, it is also documented that cigarette smoke contains about over 4000 chemicals which are associated with a number of health complications like cardiovascular disease. The study is still undergoing on the effects of smoking on infertility. It is estimated that the 35% of reproductive-aged males smoke, men who smoke tend to have a decrease in total sperm count when compared to the non-smokers. It is estimated that 30% of the women among the reproductive age are the smoker, the woman who smokes have the higher odds of infertility when compared to nonsmokers.
Alcohol
There have been number of studies conducted on the effects of alcohol on fertility. While there are many studies carried out to study the link between alcohol and infertility, there has been no clear classification of what amount relates to an increased risk. In men, the alcohol consumption has linked with many side effects which also includes the decreased amount of sperm count. The woman who drinks more of alcohol is classified to have higher chances of infertility when compared to that of men.
Conclusions
Lifestyle factors play a crucial role, including an appropriate age of starting a family, proper intake of nutrition, exercise, psychological impact, smoking, alcohol and other factors are mutable and may impact fertility.
