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Too Toxic to Conceive
Is Your Lifestyle to Blame for Your Inability to Conceive?
By Teri Brown
Dr. Mitchell-Leef says that sperm develop to maturity over a 72-day period. Therefore, it will take over three months to improve motility in a smoker who quits and to ascertain if smoking is the only factor causing motility problems.
Smoking is also a clear risk factor for tubal infertility or the inability to get pregnant due to malfunction of the fallopian tubes. Smoking has a negative effect on tubal cilia, or hairs that help transport the egg down the length of the tube to the uterus. Because of this, women who smoke are also at greater risk of having ectopic pregnancies that develop within the tube.
"We remind all our patients that it is imperative for them to stop smoking when they wish to go forward with medications to help ovulation to occur," says Dr. Mitchell-Leef. "Many women whose reproductive therapy went poorly while they smoked improved their egg production after quitting."
"Women should avoid cigarettes, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and caffeine, which are each clearly documented risk factors for infertility," says Dr. Sebestyen. "THC, the major psychoactive constituent of marijuana, decreases the fertilizing potential of human sperm. This effect is likely confined to the period around his marijuana use and not throughout his life unless the marijuana use is persistent."
THC, the ingredient that affects your brain in marijuana, interferes with the way that a sperm is able to penetrate and fertilize an egg, and this decreases the chances o pregnancy. In a report released by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, a study done by the State University of New York at Buffalo examined the semen samples from men who reported smoking marijuana for an average of five years. The study found that the marijuana smokers had reduced semen volume and sperm number.
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