Smoking/Tobacco Chewing and Fertility

Are You Smoking Your Fertility? This would be my question to all of you who has the habit of smoking or tobacco chewing. We all know smoking/tobacco is injurious to health, therefore I am not talking about normal health issues. Today I would like to highlight that smoking kills your fertility. Let's figure out with some details.

1. Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking

Most people understand that smoking/tobacco chewing increases the risk for heart, vascular, and lung disease. But many don't realize that smoking/tobacco chewing can also lead to problems with fertility in both men and women. Erectile dysfunction and pregnancy complication rates are also increased with smoking.

2. Will smoking/tobacco chewing affect my sperm or eggs?

Affect on eggs:

• Chemicals (such as nicotine, cyanide, and carbon monoxide) in cigarette smoke/ tobacco chewing speed up the loss rate of eggs.
• Unfortunately,once eggs die off, they cannot regenerate or be replaced.
• This means that menopause occurs 1 to 4 years earlier in women who smoke (compared with non-smokers).

Affect on sperms:

In the case of male smokers/tobacco chewers they will suffer from

• Decreased sperm quality
• Lower counts (numbers of sperm) and
• Reduced Motility (sperm's ability to move) and
• Increased numbers of abnormally shaped sperm
  Smoking/tobacco chewing might also decrease the sperm's ability to fertilize eggs.

3. How can smoking/tobacco chewing impact my ability to conceive?

• Women who smoke/chew tobacco does not conceive as efficiently as non-smokers.
• Infertility rates in both male and female smoker's or tobacco chewers are about twice the rate of infertility found in non-smokers.
• The risk for fertility problems increases with the number of cigarettes smoked daily.
• Couples who smoke/use tobacco in any form find it a tough time to get Pregnant Naturally.
• Even fertility treatments such as IVF maynot be able to fully overcome smoking's effects on fertility.
• Female smokers need more ovary-stimulating medications during IVF and still have less eggs at collection time and have 30%lower pregnancy rates compared with IVF patients who do not smoke.
• Because smoking/tobacco chewing damages the genetic material in eggs and sperm, miscarriage and off spring birth defect rates are higher among patients who smoke.
• Smokeless tobacco also leads to increased miscarriage rates. Women who smoke are more likely to conceive a chromosomally unhealthy pregnancy (such as a pregnancy affected by Down syndrome) than non smoking mothers.
• Ectopic pregnancies and preterm labor also occur often among female smokers.

4. Can smoking/tobacco chewing affect my children?

• Men whose mothers smoked half a pack of cigarettes (or more) a day had lower sperm counts.
• Smoking during pregnancy also can lead to growth restriction of the baby before birth.
• Children born with lower-than-expected birth weightsare at higher risk for medical problems later in life (such as diabetes, obesity,and cardiovascular disease).
• Children whose parents smoke are at increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS) and for developing asthma.

5. I don't smoke but my partner does. Does this passive smoking affect my fertility?

Women exposed to secondhand smoke can suffer from

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Heart disease later in life.

6. Does smoking/tobacco chewing affect endometrial growth?

• Nicotine in tobacco adversely affect the decidualization (Preparing process of the endometriumfor pregnancy) process.
• They also cause a decrease in endometrial (Inner lining of the uterus) proliferation.
• They are also related to aberrant regulation of the angiogenetic (Process of formation of blood vessels) process.

7. If I stop smoking/tobacco chewing, will my chances for conceiving and having a healthy pregnancy improve?

• Quitting smoking/tobacco chewing definitely improves fertility, though the decrease of the egg quality, which already occurred cannot be reversed.
• The longer a person has not smoked the rate of pregnancy complications due to smoking decreases accordingly.

Stop Smoking/Tobacco Chewing, start repairing.

Give your body a chance to breathe Healthy.