5 Effects of obesity on fertility

Everyone knows that obesity has multiple health hazards; it increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and back pain. It also could be a reason to infertility or failure to conceive in many cases; so we will discuss how obesity could interfere with conception.

1. Obesity causes hormonal disturbance

Doctors say in overweight women (body mass index over 30), their body hormones levels interfere with ovulation and reduce the chance of conception.

2. Obesity leads to insulin resistance

Hormonal disturbance caused by obesity lead to insulin resistance, which predispose to diabetes and increase the incidence of anovulation (no ova are produced as well as irregular or absent menstrual cycle).

3. Obesity could lead to failure of natural or assisted pregnancy

Due to the above factors (hormonal disturbance & insulin resistance), obesity increases the risk of miscarriage whether conception is achieved by normal pregnancy or assisted techniques (such as IVF).

4. Obesity affects badly on men's fertility too

Effects of obesity on fertility isn't limited to women only, it affects men too. Obesity leads to reduction of testosterone level, which in turn may be a reason for reduction of sperm count. Also obesity increases the incidence of erectile dysfunction.

5. If you lose some weight, you can improve all the above factors

Management of the above issues includes losing some weight. If you lose some weight, hormonal levels will come back to normal values; insulin resistance will be off, the incidence of miscarriage will be minimal. This will increase the chance of conception.