7 Surprising Facts About Fertility

You might think you know all there is to know about getting pregnant, either because you've 'been there, done that' with babies, or because you've tried everything under the sun to get pregnant. Or maybe you simply are just way too smart for the average fertility guru to handle. Whatever way your egg bounces, reading this article might surprise you once or twice: being fertile isn't always what it's ‘cracked up to be’ (pun intended).

1. Dr. Oz might not make the cut.  That's right – just because you exercise regularly, eat right and know everything under the sun about how to keep healthy, it doesn't mean you’re fertile and ready to make babies.  In fact, one in ten healthy couples will have issues with fertility for one reason or another, making the woman responsible one third of the time, the man another third, and the final third left to an unknown reason. What can you do?  Well, just throwing in the towel won’t help – keep doing what you can to be healthy as it might increase your odds, but also seek out natural methods of improving your chances like trying naturopathic medicine.

2. Set a date before you ovulate. You’re not necessarily more fertile the very day you ovulate, so plan to start trying around five or six days before the actual day. This is because the man’s sperm is viable inside you for several days (or even weeks!), and so you can really build up a good store of sperm by starting early. Then when ovulation does happen, you’ll have more little swimmers to take a shot at the one egg up for grabs.

3. Men, bike away!  Worried your man’s bicycle is going to keep the two of you childless? Well, studies show that such concerns really have no merit. Unless he’s cycling for hours and hours a day and his racing shorts are super-duper tight, and he has a very narrow seat that presses right on his gonads - and even then - you’re likely to be completely in the clear.  Besides, a little exercise is good for fertility!

4. What’s that smell? Smell something funny that no one else can? Could mean you’re ovulating! Maybe biology has made it this way to help you smell out the right mate (and steer clear of the wrong ones!), but for whatever reason studies show that ovulating women have a heightened sense of smell. So if you’re trying to get pregnant, look for the super-smell signs!

5. Men have a clock too. Men are not unlimited for time when it comes to being fertile either. While they may have a little more time than women, after about 45 years old a man’s quality of sperm starts to decrease, which of course affects fertility. So although you can still get pregnant with a man of that age or older, your odds go down the more his age goes up.

6. Shed the weight. If you’re looking to drop that last ten pounds you don’t need to worry, but if you’re looking at a great deal more than that you should probably consider trying to lose some. And we’re not talking about model-type weight here, just enough to get you into healthy parameters - most experts recommend a BMI (Body Mass Index) of between 18.5 and 25.

7. Drop the heat. A man’s sperm is more viable at temperatures lower than normal body temp’s, so make sure your guy is keeping his nether regions in the right range for fertility. Most people know that super-tight underwear is less than ideal, but many are not aware of the potential rise in temperature from things like laptops on the lap, or even saunas and hot tubs. So tell him to keep his boys cool, at least until you've conceived.

By Richard Lobbenberg, Registered Acupuncturist and TCM Practitioner

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