Intense workout can cause infertility – Dr. Arvind Vaid, IVF expert, Indira IVF Hospital, New Delhi 

As per the study published in the journal ’Fertility and sterility’ revealed that in normal weight women, too much strenuous exercise could cause delays in conception. And it found that depending on your current BMI, exercise can impact your fertility in different ways. Women exercising for a long duration can also affect their estrogen levels. In normal-weight women, however, more vigorous exercise may make it harder to conceive. If the obese body is over heated the fat gets burned and leads to depletion of estrogen levels impacting fertility.

Exercise is one of the best gifts that you can present to your body as it offers numerous health benefits. But we are stuck into a lifestyle where we usually don’t have time for our body and spending hours at a gym is not in the list. Living the same lifestyle for years can have serious complications including physical and mental conditions. Our body needs some physical activity regardless of the type that can boost the development and increases our overall productivity. Apart from the benefits that one can have from workout, you may have a cause of infertility.

The positives:

Ø Improves the condition of heart – The condition of the heart is directly related to the physical activity of the body. The ratio of the people who don’t prefer to get involved in the physical activities is much higher suffering from different heart diseases compared to ones who exercise on daily basis.

Ø Get a good sleep – There are studies which prove that with regular exercise, you can get a good sleep at night. As exercise will strengthen the circadian rhythms of the body which will make you active in the day time and let you sleep properly during night time.

Ø Energy booster – Most of us have the misconception about exercising that it soaks up your energy from the body and let you down for the whole day. But actually, it works just opposite to that as it will keep you active by releasing a special hormone in the body.

Ø Increases self-confidence – With regular exercising, you can get the perfect shape you always wanted to which will boost your self-confidence. With the perfect shape and the positive aura, you can perform better than your performances at work and at home.

The negatives:

With so many advantages of exercising on daily basis, there is no reason to avoid such physical activity but there are some proven facts which showed that vigorous training session can actually lower down your fertility regardless of the sex of the person.

It is a normal saying that ‘Too much of good thing can also be bad’. Generally, in women, there is a condition called Amenorrhea, it happens when a normal woman does not experience a menstrual cycle for more than three months. A woman can get into this condition when she has been following a regular form of exercise with 3 to 4 sessions in a day without consuming the regular calories required by the body. Due to the scarcity of calories in the body, it can impact the fertility as well as the sexual desires of the woman. Obesity also plays a vital role, as most of the obese women go through hard sessions of exercises to reduce some weight from the body.

Additionally, obesity can cause an increased production of estrogen, affecting ovulation and menstruation, which in turn can cause infertility. In some cases, where young women are working out at a level that causes too little estrogen to the point of interfering with regular menstrual cycles, exercise can negatively affect fertility. This can also create problems while conceiving a baby depending on the changed estrogen levels.

We all have been aware especially women that most contraceptive pills contain higher estrogen levels and after consuming them, you can prevent yourself from getting pregnant. The stimulated level of estrogen is also prepared during an intense workout and if you are planning to conceive, avoid heavy exercises and come back to the normal routine.

In males, heavy training sessions can reduce the sperm count in the body that is directly related to the fertility of a man. There are many of us, who have been following long-term training sessions in order to maintain our body. If you are into exhaustive training sessions, there are chances that you might have less sperm count compared to a man who has been following normal training sessions.

Long-term exhaustive exercises decreases sperm count and one’s potential for reproduction. On the other hand, heavy resistance training works antagonistically. Heavy resistance training actually increase the production of testosterone, which can exhibit a secondary effect on other hormones that contribute to fertility in men which in turn can make it harder for female partner to conceive. Apart from intensive workout, some other reasons like smoking and consuming alcohol are also found responsible for affecting male fertility.

There should be no reason to stop exercising but everything should be maintained as our body reacts to everything in a different way. Keep it simple and regular but don’t push your limits if you are not into this professionally. Always try to maintain a proper diet with your regular exercise as your body needs calories and nutrients on daily basis and especially when you lose the energy while exercising. You can always get your sperm count checked or infertility in women that can offer you new ways to overcome the problem and to get back to the normal life.

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