Stress and fertility

Although it is not known exactly how stress affects a couple’s fertility, it is known that reducing stress improves quality of life during assisted reproductive treatments.

Stress arises whenever we feel threatened. Faced with danger, our body responds with reactions that protect life, escaping or facing it. By adapting these reactions to the stress of not being able to conceive, we see that many patients fearfully face treatments or procedures, or withdraw from loved ones to avoid being judged or hurt, or sometimes simply refuse to face the pain. problem delaying seeking help.

Although reducing stress does not guarantee getting pregnant, we do know that decisions made in states of anxiety may not be the right ones. For this reason, it is recommended to lower stress levels so that patients allow themselves to seek the best alternatives and thus make the best decisions regarding their treatment.

According to the American Association for Reproductive Medicine, reducing stress is good for your health and although no one is known to start fertility treatment stress-free, they claim that finding a way to reduce stress while on treatment helps take the burden off treatment. fertility and the different medical protocols more successfully.

Among the techniques that are recommended to reduce anxiety levels are:

  • Physical exercise.

  • Massages.

  • Psychotherapy.

  • Listening to music.

  • Meditation.

  • Yoga.

  • Visualization techniques.

  • Progressive relaxation.

  • Walking.

  • Among other.

It is also important to recognize that it is very difficult to be responsible for one’s own infertility, it is useless to feel guilty about something that is not in our hands to control. Even the tubal ligation is necessary at the moment in which the decision to do it is made, we never expect to be wrong when we choose a partner. It is basic to understand that it is a disease that is not definitive, that it has a solution.

“You just have to take on the challenge of facing the problem, looking for specialists and giving yourself wholeheartedly to achieving this goal, recognizing that a little stress is normal, but that it should not have so much power as to stop us and prevent us from achieving what we want. .”

Dr. Otto Paredes
Dr. Otto Paredes
Fertility expert
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