If You Want to Get Pregnant, Roll Over and Go to Sleep
How babies are made is no great mystery.
What is mysterious is how something else that often happens in bed can affect your ability to get pregnant.
Sleep might be a fairly important factor to consider when you want to conceive.
Not getting enough of it can throw your body out of whack enough to make conception more difficult.
The physicians at the Reproductive Resource Center of Greater Kansas City encourage their patients to get plenty of rest.
They understand that undergoing procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF) can cause considerable stress that might have an effect on a woman's ability to conceive.
Getting a good night's sleep - and how much sleep is enough can vary quite a bit among different people - helps keep your circadian rhythm smooth.
Your circadian rhythm is your internal clock, the one that helps control every system in your body.
That rhythm also determines when you ovulate.
If your body lacks sleep, it wants to protect itself, so it boosts the immune system and performs other activities that take its "attention" away from conceiving.
Lots of things can get in the way of healthy sleep, and the lack of sleep can contribute to other problems.
For example, chronic stress, obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can lower a woman's chances of getting pregnant.
These conditions can all be made worse by sleep loss.
What can you do to improve your sleep and your odds of conceiving? Try to put yourself on a regular sleep schedule.
Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
This single action can help even out your menstrual cycle.
Many women who sleep irregularly find they experience menstrual changes, such as increased or decreased flow, shorter or longer flow, irregular cycles and more pain.
These changes can signal ovulation problems.
If you need to, lose weight.
Those extra pounds can bring many health problems with them, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
It can also affect your ability to get pregnant.
It has been found that women with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 35 or higher (normal is 18.
5 to 24.
9) have a 26 percent lower chance of conceiving by ordinary means than a woman of normal weight.
Even as being overweight can get in the way of conceiving, it can also be a cause and effect of sleep loss.
Sleeping less than seven hours a night can actually contribute to weight gain.
And weighing too much can cause breathing problems that wake you up.
Further, being overweight can cause your pancreas to produce too much insulin.
When the body makes too much insulin, it can impair ovulation.
High levels of insulin are also a factor in PCOS, which is a hormonal imbalance of insulin and testosterone.
What is mysterious is how something else that often happens in bed can affect your ability to get pregnant.
Sleep might be a fairly important factor to consider when you want to conceive.
Not getting enough of it can throw your body out of whack enough to make conception more difficult.
The physicians at the Reproductive Resource Center of Greater Kansas City encourage their patients to get plenty of rest.
They understand that undergoing procedures like in vitro fertilization (IVF) can cause considerable stress that might have an effect on a woman's ability to conceive.
Getting a good night's sleep - and how much sleep is enough can vary quite a bit among different people - helps keep your circadian rhythm smooth.
Your circadian rhythm is your internal clock, the one that helps control every system in your body.
That rhythm also determines when you ovulate.
If your body lacks sleep, it wants to protect itself, so it boosts the immune system and performs other activities that take its "attention" away from conceiving.
Lots of things can get in the way of healthy sleep, and the lack of sleep can contribute to other problems.
For example, chronic stress, obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can lower a woman's chances of getting pregnant.
These conditions can all be made worse by sleep loss.
What can you do to improve your sleep and your odds of conceiving? Try to put yourself on a regular sleep schedule.
Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
This single action can help even out your menstrual cycle.
Many women who sleep irregularly find they experience menstrual changes, such as increased or decreased flow, shorter or longer flow, irregular cycles and more pain.
These changes can signal ovulation problems.
If you need to, lose weight.
Those extra pounds can bring many health problems with them, including heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
It can also affect your ability to get pregnant.
It has been found that women with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 35 or higher (normal is 18.
5 to 24.
9) have a 26 percent lower chance of conceiving by ordinary means than a woman of normal weight.
Even as being overweight can get in the way of conceiving, it can also be a cause and effect of sleep loss.
Sleeping less than seven hours a night can actually contribute to weight gain.
And weighing too much can cause breathing problems that wake you up.
Further, being overweight can cause your pancreas to produce too much insulin.
When the body makes too much insulin, it can impair ovulation.
High levels of insulin are also a factor in PCOS, which is a hormonal imbalance of insulin and testosterone.
