health brief: Stress Lowers Women's Fertility

Women that feel highly stressed on a daily basis have a lower ability to conceive, report Boston University School of Medicine researchers. In a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, 4,769 couples that were trying to conceive were followed for a year. Those women with the highest self-reported stress were 13 percent less likely to conceive than women that reported little stress.

Men being under high stress had no effect on conception, but couples were a quarter less likely to conceive if the man’s stress score was low and the woman’s was high, which the researchers termed “partner stress discordance.” In North America, about one out of four women and one out of five men of reproductive age report daily psychological stress.