Losing weight has a lot of benefits, it not only helps you feel better about yourself and improves your health, but it can also boost your fertility. But how does being overweight affect your fertility, and what can you do about it? Here’s some more information on how being overweight affects fertility.

Can being overweight cause infertility?

Carrying extra weight makes it more difficult for your body to produce a healthy egg or for sperm to fertilize an egg successfully. This is because obesity affects reproductive hormones and may increase ovulation problems and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

Too much weight can also lead to insulin resistance, which can cause hormonal changes that make it difficult for a healthy egg to be released.

Excess weight affects female fertility

In men, excess weight can cause hormone changes that reduce male fertility. Being overweight can:

  • Reduce sperm production and motility
  • Cause erectile dysfunction
  • Affect the shape and size of the testicles, which can increase the temperature of the testicles and negatively impact sperm production.

Excess weight affects female fertility

In women, obesity may affect fertility by:

  • Causing irregular menstrual cycles, which make it more difficult to become pregnant.
  • Impacting ovulation, for example, by reducing the production of hormones needed to stimulate ovulation
  • Increasing the risk of a miscarriage or other pregnancy complications.

How does weight affect pregnancy?

Gaining too much weight during pregnancy can harm both the mother’s and the baby’s health. If you gain too much weight while pregnant, you can risk developing gestational diabetes, which can make labour more difficult, increase the likelihood of needing a caesarean delivery, and cause anaesthetic issues during surgery.

Conclusion

In short, it depends. While the consensus is that being overweight doesn’t directly affect fertility, there are some very specific cases in which it does. If you are also facing any problem related to infertility, then contact Dr. Irfan Shaikh, Urolife Care Clinic at Pune.