Habits That Affect Reproduction
We all want to live long, healthy lives and for many, that means having offspring as well, but are you performing some of these lifestyle habits that affect reproduction and therefore affect your fertility? This expert breaks it down:
Be healthy inside and out
Do you want to create cool, healthy, happy offspring?
Fertility issues are prevalent in both women AND men and if you’re trying to procreate (now or in the future), then make sure your life doesn’t include these 4 things.
Hours of cardio
You probably didn’t think of this as one of the harmful habits that affect reproduction.
Most women, and some men, never see the inside of the weight room because they’re brainwashed into believing that hours on the elliptical or treadmill is the solution to their problems. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Cardiovascular health IS important but cardio for an hour is a waste of time and unnecessarily stressful on the body. Not only can running on the treadmill be hard on your joints, but cardio-only routines can also release more cortisol, which, in higher sustained levels, can wreck a world of havoc on your hormones.
Out-of-whack hormones mess with a lot of things in human bodies but in females, they can mess up our cycles, making planning a pregnancy difficult.
In addition to internal damage, cardio-only routines are highly inefficient! Cardio only burns calories while you’re performing it while weight lifting burns calories for an estimated 48 hours after. That means your body is continuously using energy even after you’ve left the gym, and not storing it!
Tip: A well-planned weight lifting routine will take 25-45 minutes, challenge your stability and coordination while increasing your strength and endurance.
Not managing your stress
I mentioned cortisol already and it also kicks in when we’re mentally over-stressed. We have demanding jobs, we’re striving for perfection, running from activity to activity. This chronic stress has been shown to be extremely detrimental to our health.
Little spikes of stress, good. Stress all day and night, bad.
Cortisol is a nasty little sucker that blocks the receptors of sex hormones and even steals the pre-hormone to progesterone, which is a crucial factor in regulating a woman’s menstrual cycle.
Tip: When you wake up, take 5 big SLOW belly breaths in through your nose, out through your mouth, and on each one, name something/someone you’re grateful for.
Do this throughout the day when you need to refocus, slow down, feel grounded. Stress is definitely one of those lifestyle habits that affect reproduction!
Processed Foods
This is one of the top harmful habits that affect reproduction! What makes processed foods taste so good is the fact they were made in a lab with chemicals to achieve that perfect crunch, pop, or fluffiness.
Those chemicals or ingredients are stripped down to the point where our bodies don’t know how to properly digest them. And when they do, it causes more damage than benefit because it’s not the real food our bodies are used to.
Take a popular preservative, sodium benzoate:
‘It is a benzene compound that is produced by mixing benzoic acid with sodium hydroxide. It is a common preservative in processed foods and soft drinks. It has been associated with a vast array of health problems, including all of our major epidemics.
Sodium benzoate is considerably more toxic than either processed sugar or high fructose corn syrup, yet it gets very little media coverage. It is a bona fide poison.
Outside of our foods, benzene is the main ingredient of Liquid Wrench, various paint stripper products, rubber cement, and spot removers, due it its highly destructive and solvent qualities. It was discontinued in rubber manufacture in the U.S. because it caused a large percentage of workers to get leukemia.’ – Healthwyze.org
Even though ‘trace amounts are found in packaged food and drink products, the compounding effect of repeated exposure is terrible.
Now think about a woman who has been consuming these toxins since childhood, she’s having trouble getting pregnant, and when she finally does and continues to consume the same processed junk, what the effects are on her fetus, who is using that ‘nutrition’ to grow. No wonder kids of today have so many issues, it’s because their health is affected while in utero!
It’s our responsibilities as adults to feed ourselves healthy, whole foods to feed our offspring.
Tip: drink more water, less soda. Eat tons of vegetables, fresh and fatty proteins, more fat (coconut, lard, avocados), and minimal carbohydrates (which usually come in packages.)
Binge Alcoholism
It’s easy to get caught up in binge drinking when our society encourages social gatherings at bars or hanging out to watch sporting events once a week. Binge drinking has been associated with heart arrhythmias which can lead to more dangerous arrhythmias, cerebral bleeds, strokes, and death from coronary artery disease.
In addition to the heart, the liver and pancreas are two other organs most commonly affected by binge drinking. Because of binging, excessive cell growth can lead to pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.
Reproductively speaking, alcohol causes: erectile dysfunction, sperm growth issues and lowering of testosterone in men, and lowered fertility in women.
If you’re trying to make a baby, it’s advised to lay off the booze and avoid this making this one of your habits that affect reproduction!
Wrap-Up
Please forget the, ‘everything in moderation’ tagline. Is cocaine in moderation okay then? I hope you said no.
This mindset is not doing us any favors, it’s actually slowly killing most Americans.
Be better for yourself, your partner, and your future kids by choosing to be the healthiest version of yourself RIGHT NOW.
- Unhealthy Habits That Affect Reproduction - January 20, 2016
- 5 Movements to Rehabilitate Your New Mom Bod - January 4, 2016
