Coffee and Infertility

Caffeine and Infertility: What You Should Know

The causes of infertility are often due to more than just one reason. While women will automatically assume the problem lies within herself, and will rush to make an appointment with an infertility specialist, when one of the problems could be the types of beverage intake. The importance of weeding out possible external reasons first could save you time, pain, and money. Many women assume that the reasons for the infertility are complicated and probably will require extensive exams, calendar timing, and probing.

            Considerable research had been done about the effects of caffeine and infertility. Early studies concluded that coffee, tea, chocolate, and soda pop didn’t have negative effects on the reproduction system or to the unborn child. Other studies found the opposite. However, researchers didn’t take into consideration other lifestyle factors that might add to infertility, birth defects, or miscarriages.

            We are blessed in this day of more thorough research and modern medical miracles. Now we have access to much of the research being done so that we can eliminate the lesser causes ourselves, saving a lot of the grief and time consuming methods at the gynecologist’s office.

            The newest evidence is believed to prove decisively that caffeine does indeed induce miscarriages. The January 2008 study by The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, states that pregnant women drinking more than 200 milligrams of caffeine a day, which is the same as about two cups of coffee, stand to have double the risk of miscarriage as women who consume no caffeine at all.

            The reason caffeine is so detrimental when pregnant is because it can be absorbed by the placenta into the unborn child causing difficulty in metabolizing the caffeine. It can also effect the cell development and lessen the flow of blood to the placenta. This is called vasoconstriction, which means restrictive blood flow that can cause a miscarriage or considerably low birth weight. Caffeine can also cause colic, agitation, and inability to sleep when ingested through breast milk when the mother drinks more than one cup of coffee a day.         

            For many of us with a great desire to conceive a baby, quitting coffee, soda, tea, and hot chocolate consumption is a sacrifice when those beverages have become a staple in providing more energy in our day.  Just think of the needed abstinence as temporary until conception has been achieved and nursing is over. Chances are that once the intake of these beverages is stopped, and you have become used to being caffeine-free, you will notice that you feel much better anyway. Decaffeinated beverages are always a viable choice. You still get the taste, but lose the dangerous effects to your unborn baby.