The Roles of Stress, Diet, and Exercise

By Kathleen

Once again the roles of stress, diet, exercise and fertility are in the scientific headlines. Sometimes it’s hard to hear another story preaching ‘lower your stress levels, and you will become pregnant’, as it seems like these researchers don’t know how amazingly stressful infertility is. But we have to be logical, and put those thoughts aside when the evidence is so clear. Stress, as well as poor diet and excessive exercise, have measurable detrimental effects on women trying to conceive. This article talks about a specific 16 week cognitive behavioral therapy program that showed measurable results. I suspect that simpler (and cheaper!) mechanisms (self help books, yoga, etc) can also help.