Smoking and Infertility - 5 Things You Didn't Know

Its no surprise that smoking causes infertility. What is surprising is how much impact it has. I may have some good news at the end for you smokers



#1 Here’s a message I got from my website: Dr. Morris why do you have so much information about smoking? Nobody smokes anymore. Oh really? Even in 2018, about ⅓ of men and women of reproductive age in the United States are smokers. Despite all the warnings and public service announcements. One in three!



#2 Think cigarette smoke is only in the lungs? Think again. A recent study in IVF patients found breakdown products of nicotine in 100% of the follicular fluids of infertility patients undergoing IVF. The more they smoked, the higher the levels were found. In other words, if you are a smoker, your eggs are soaking 24 hours a day in cigarette smoke breakdown products.



Even more alarming? In that same study, 84% of women who were non-smokers and whose partners were non smokers, also had nicotine by-products in their follicular fluid. In other words, the people who smoke at your job are compromising your fertility!



#3 Smokers, you are going to run out eggs sooner. Cigarette smoking has been shown to accelerate the loss of eggs from the ovaries. One of the blood tests we use to measure how many eggs are left is the hormone FSH. Higher FSH levels mean less eggs remain. You commonly see this as women get older. Guess what? Smokers have 66% higher FSH levels than non-smokers. You are likely to go through menopause at an earlier age.-



#4 Smoking also affects IVF success. I know what you are thinking: I’ll just do IVF. Everybody gets pregnant with IVF right? Agreed, IVF is a very good treatment for most types of infertility. However, smokers doing IVF needed higher doses of those expensive fertility injections, but they still ended up with more cycles getting cancelled, less eggs when they weren’t cancelled, more cycles with failed fertilization and overall had a much lower pregnancy rate.



#5 Fine Dr. Morris. You have succeeded in stressing me out, I’m never going to get pregnant, I might as well just have another pack of cigarettes. Wait! Stop! I actually have some good news. Quitting smoking will improve your fertility. In fact, ex-smokers have similar fertility to non-smokers.



OK. That’s 5 things. For more information on smoking and fertility, go to my website at ivf1.com

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