Pets and fertility

A few years ago, when I started working in the area of fertility, I was talking with a friend about her experience with infertility and she told me about the treatment that a very famous specialist in that city had given her to solve her infertility: Have a dog If you don’t get pregnant in a year, I give you a more complicated treatment.

At the time, knowing what I knew about fertility treatments, it seemed like the most irresponsible thing I’d ever heard. I judged him, I judged his professional quality in that comment and I was not prudent, I admit it. But something important had happened: my friend had gotten pregnant.

I had never had a dog until two years ago, and today, remembering that “treatment” I find that option totally viable in a very young person, very anxious and with no apparent cause of infertility. It is not an option for everyone, in our clinic we have a lot of patients with dogs, seriously, a lot. But perhaps he, in the wisdom that the experience had given him, had seen the anxiety and the immense desire to love that my friend had, so he offered her a door before beginning the possible emotional drain that most procedures would entail. of infertility.

Each human being is different, and we cannot judge the work of others by an isolated case. The doctor had not only evaluated my friend without finding any real cause for her not getting pregnant and she was very young, so I guess what made her infertile condition change was the following:

The relationship with a dog or a cat of total or partial type:

  • Reduces stress: Sharing with an animal that you love reduces the production of cortisol (the stress hormone) and raises oxytocin levels, the same hormone that the mother generates when she is with her baby. Have you heard about post traumatic stress research? The most effective treatment includes caring for a dog.

  • Lowers blood pressure: Not only does it help you produce feel-good hormones, but it forces you to leave the house to walk it, that is, it forces you to exercise and enjoy life, it makes you enjoy open spaces and appreciate the benefits on a sunny day or at least without rain, which directly influences your blood pressure.

  • Promotes Heart Health: According to the American Heart Association, keeping a dog as a pet is one way to keep cardiovascular disease in check. After reviewing the scientific evidence in this regard, American specialists suggest that the key to this benefit could lie in the greater physical activity that people who own pets such as dogs usually do.

  • Goodbye Sadness: Having a dog relieves loneliness and depression, generally those who have a dog or cat show better self-esteem. All this is related to the feeling of being necessary and important to another being. The unconditional affection of these creatures produces behaviors of responsibility and compassion towards another, which would not easily arise towards another human being who was not their own child.

In short, when you are not stressed, you give love to another being, you dedicate your time to be with someone else, you move, you exercise and you feel accompanied, you are keeping the psychological symptoms of infertility at bay. This could not only be positive if your infertility has no apparent cause, but it could improve the emotional conditions to be successful in a more complicated infertility treatment.

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“Best of all: Having a dog during pregnancy and parenting extends these benefits to the whole family, baby included.”

Dr. Otto Paredes
Dr. Otto Paredes
Fertility Expert

Reproductive medicine and gynecological endocrinology
Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad, Spain.

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