Doctors suggest moderate activity and exercise can increase a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant, but is there such thing as too much? Researchers have already discovered the common fertility complications of elite female athletes, but what about the women who workout to exhaustion to fit into the size 5 that is hiding in the back of their closet? Could excessive and intense workouts be impeding you from becoming pregnant? A new study from the Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU) explores the correlation between extreme physical activity and infertility.
Researchers surveyed a sample group of nearly 3,000 healthy women (of child-bearing age) regarding the frequency, duration and level of physical activity. Ten years later they surveyed the same group of women regarding their pregnancy and childbirth experiences. The correlations were striking:
“Among those who reported training to exhaustion (regardless of frequency and duration), 24 per cent had fertility problems. In the group that had trained almost every day (regardless of the intensity and duration), 11 per cent reported the same. And when we compared those who trained to exhaustion to those who trained more moderately, we found that the first group had a three-fold greater risk of impaired fertility,” says Sigridur Lara Gudmundsdottir, a PhD candidate at NTNU.
She explains further, “Among all these women, we found two groups who experienced an increased risk of infertility. There were those who trained almost every day. And there were those who trained until they were completely exhausted. Those who did both had the highest risk of infertility.” Contrastingly, the women who reported low or moderate physical activity did not experience impaired fertility overall. It also must be noted that most of the women did have children eventually, suggesting that exhausting physical activity is not permanently damaging to a woman’s fertility; typically once the hard-training ceases the body will function as normal again.
Of course there are many other possible contributing factors for impaired fertility, including: body mass index, smoking, age, marital status, and previous pregnancies. Keeping these factors in mind, the researchers still found that “women who trained every day had a 3.5 times greater risk of impaired fertility as women who did not train at all.”
So why does a woman’s body react this way? Researchers propose that it could be the way that the body distributes energy. During times of extreme physical activity, the body exerts all of its energy into the workout, leaving the systems that maintain hormonal mechanisms (enabling fertilization) energy deficient. On the other side of the coin, moderate activity benefits a woman’s chances of fertilization because it betters insulin function as well as strengthens her hormonal profile. Gudmundsdottir says ,”We believe it is likely that physical activity at a very high or very low level has a negative effect on fertility, while moderate activity is beneficial. An individual’s energy metabolism is a very important factor in this context. The threshold can be very individual.” It s recommended that you create a workout plan with your physician, that is best for your body.
