Excessive exercise reduces fertility, myth or fact?

One natural way that is considered effective in increasing fertility is exercising. However, you still have to pay attention to the intensity and duration. The reason is, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that excessive exercise can actually reduce fertility.

How could a healthy activity have a negative impact on your fertility? Check out the following complete information.

What is excessive exercise like?

In general, everyone is advised to exercise for at least 150 minutes each week. This need can be greater if you have specific goals, such as losing weight or building muscle.

You can continue to increase the duration and intensity of exercise, but your body still has limits. Everyone has a different limit of ability. Exercise with a duration or intensity that exceeds this limit is called excessive.

The definition of overexertion varies from person to person. Even so, there are a number of symptoms that arise when a person is exercising beyond his means. These symptoms include increased heart rate, insomnia, decreased appetite, and stress.

In women, excessive exercise can also cause temporary cessation of menstruation or amenorrhea. This is what ultimately led many people to believe that excessive exercise can reduce fertility.

What does the research on exercise and fertility say?

Various studies on the relationship between exercise and fertility have yielded mixed results. Mild and moderate intensity exercise is beneficial for fertility, but vigorous intensity exercise can actually reduce it.

This is proven by a study in the journal Sports Medicine . In this study, strenuous intensity exercise for more than 60 minutes a day was alleged to prevent ovulation. Ovulation is the process of releasing an egg from the ovary.

Once released, the egg should travel down the fallopian tube to fertilize it. However, excessive exercise puts stress on the body. Stress blocks the function of the pituitary gland in the brain which regulates the ovulation mechanism.

Instead of triggering ovulation, the pituitary gland responds to stress by preventing ovulation from occurring. This is the body's mechanism for protecting itself from high stress due to excessive physical activity. In the end, excessive exercise actually stops ovulation and reduces fertility.

Excessive exercise can also affect the function of the hormone leptin. Disorders of the hormone leptin can reduce appetite. In fact, your body needs nutrients, especially fat to be able to ovulate.

In addition, the disrupted function of the hormone leptin will also disrupt metabolism. A chaotic metabolism coupled with a lack of fat intake gradually inhibits ovulation. As a result, you experience amenorrhea which is characterized by the cessation of menstruation for 3 months or more.

Can fertility return to normal?

Excessive exercise can reduce fertility, but you can restore it in several ways. The first method is to provide additional calorie intake so that the body can return to normal function. You can calculate your calorie needs here.

If you don't want to increase your calorie intake, you can use the second method by taking fertility drugs or birth control pills. That way, the reproductive hormones in your body will return to normal.

Although effective, this method is not suitable for women who are underweight nutrition. You need to gain weight and improve nutritional intake first so that the body is able to carry out its functions again.

After that, then you can go back to your normal exercise routine. Make sure you do the exercise you need. Avoid excessive exercise or other activities that can reduce fertility again.

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