Lifestyle and fertility: the influence of stress and quality of life on female fertility

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Abstract

There is growing evidence that lifestyle choices account for the overall quality of health and life (QoL) reflecting many potential lifestyle risks widely associated with alterations of the reproductive function up to the infertility. This review aims to summarize in a critical fashion the current knowledge about the potential effects of stress and QoL on female reproductive function. A specific literature search up to August 2017 was performed in IBSS, SocINDEX, Institute for Scientific Information, PubMed, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Current review highlights a close relationship in women between stress, QoL and reproductive function, that this association is more likely reported in infertile rather than fertile women, and that a vicious circle makes them to have supported each other. However, a precise cause-effect relationship is still difficult to demonstrate due to conflicting results and the lack of objective measures/instruments of evaluation.

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Stress revisited: a critical evaluation of the stress concept.

J M Koolhaas, A Bartolomucci, B Buwalda … (2011)

With the steadily increasing number of publications in the field of stress research it has become evident that the conventional usage of the stress concept bears considerable problems. The use of the term 'stress' to conditions ranging from even the mildest challenging stimulation to severely aversive conditions, is in our view inappropriate. Review of the literature reveals that the physiological 'stress' response to appetitive, rewarding stimuli that are often not considered to be stressors can be as large as the response to negative stimuli. Analysis of the physiological response during exercise supports the view that the magnitude of the neuroendocrine response reflects the metabolic and physiological demands required for behavioural activity. We propose that the term 'stress' should be restricted to conditions where an environmental demand exceeds the natural regulatory capacity of an organism, in particular situations that include unpredictability and uncontrollability. Physiologically, stress seems to be characterized by either the absence of an anticipatory response (unpredictable) or a reduced recovery (uncontrollable) of the neuroendocrine reaction. The consequences of this restricted definition for stress research and the interpretation of results in terms of the adaptive and/or maladaptive nature of the response are discussed. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Women's emotional adjustment to IVF: a systematic review of 25 years of research.

C M Verhaak, J M J Smeenk, A Evers … (2015)

This review provides an overview of how women adjust emotionally to the various phases of IVF treatment in terms of anxiety, depression or general distress before, during and after different treatment cycles. A systematic scrutiny of the literature yielded 706 articles that paid attention to emotional aspects of IVF treatment of which 27 investigated the women's emotional adjustment with standardized measures in relation to norm or control groups. Most studies involved concurrent comparisons between women in different treatment phases and different types of control groups. The findings indicated that women starting IVF were only slightly different emotionally from the norm groups. Unsuccessful treatment raised the women's levels of negative emotions, which continued after consecutive unsuccessful cycles. In general, most women proved to adjust well to unsuccessful IVF, although a considerable group showed subclinical emotional problems. When IVF resulted in pregnancy, the negative emotions disappeared, indicating that treatment-induced stress is considerably related to threats of failure. The concurrent research reviewed, should now be underpinned by longitudinal studies to provide more information about women's long-term emotional adjustment to unsuccessful IVF and about indicators of risk factors for problematic emotional adjustment after unsuccessful treatment, to foster focused psychological support for women at risk.

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Infertility and psychological distress: a critical review of the literature.

Arthur L Greil (1997)

This essay reviews the literature on the social psychological impact of infertility, paying special attention to the relationship between gender and the infertility experience. It is convenient to divide the literature into articles which explore the possibility that infertility may have psychological causes (Psychogenic Hypothesis) and those which examine the psychological consequences of infertility (Psychological Consequences Hypothesis). The psychogenic hypothesis is now rejected by most researchers, but a related hypothesis, which states that stress may be a causal factor in infertility, is worthy of exploration. The descriptive literature on the psychological consequences of infertility presents infertility as a devastating experience, especially for women. Attempts to test the psychological consequences hypothesis have produced more equivocal results. In general, studies which look for psychopathology have not found significant differences between the infertile and others. Studies which employ measures of stress and self-esteem have found significant differences. The psychological consequences literature is characterized by a number of flaws, including over sampling of women, small sample size, non-representative samples, failure to study those who have not sought treatment, primitive statistical techniques, and an over-reliance on self-reports. Studies on infertility and psychological distress need to take into consideration both the duration of infertility and the duration of treatment. Finding an appropriate set of "controls" is a particularly intractable problem for this area of research. In general, the psychological distress literature shows little regard for the social construction of infertility. By taking what should be understood as a characteristic of a social situation and transforming it into an individual trait, the literature presents what is essentially a medical model of the psycho-social impact of infertility. Most researchers conclude that infertility is a more stressful experience for women than it is for men. Most studies have found that the relationship between gender and infertility distress is not affected by which partner has the reproductive impairment. Future research needs to be better informed by theoretical considerations. Scholars need to pay more attention to the way the experience of infertility is conditioned by social structural realities. New ways need to be developed for better taking into account the processual nature of the infertility experience. Efforts need to be make to include under-studied portions of the infertile population. Finally, more effort needs to be made to better integrate the empirical study of the experience of infertility with important social policy questions.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Stefano Palomba: stefanopalomba@tin.it

Jessica Daolio: jessica.daolio@ausl.re.it

Sara Romeo: sara.romeo_sr@libero.it

Francesco Antonino Battaglia: franbatt@alice.it

Roberto Marci: roberto.marci@unife.it

Giovanni Battista La Sala: giovannibattista.lasala@ausl.re.it

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Reprod Biol Endocrinol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Reprod. Biol. Endocrinol

Title: Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology : RB&E

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1477-7827

Publication date (Electronic): 2 December 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 2 December 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 16

Electronic Location Identifier: 113

Affiliations

[1 ]Unit of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Grande Ospedale Metropolitano “Bianco – Melacrino - Morelli”, Reggio Calabria, Italy

[2 ]Center of Reproductive Medicine and Surgery, Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova (ASMN) - Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (IRCCS), Reggio Emilia, Italy

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0004 1757 2064, GRID grid.8484.0, Department of Morphology, Surgery and Experimental Medicine, , University of Ferrara, ; Ferrara, Italy

[4 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2322 4988, GRID grid.8591.5, Faculty of Medicine, , University of Geneva, ; Geneva, Switzerland

[5 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0721 9812, GRID grid.150338.c, Division of Obstetrics and Gynecology, , University Hospital of Geneva, ; Geneva, Switzerland

[6 ]ISNI 0000000121697570, GRID grid.7548.e, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, ; Modena, Italy

[7 ]Center of Reproductive Medicine “P. Bertocchi” Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Azienda Unità Sanitaria Locale – IRCCS di Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy

Article

Publisher ID: 434

DOI: 10.1186/s12958-018-0434-y

PMC ID: 6275085

PubMed ID: 30501641

SO-VID: c3ce53e6-da8e-430f-9a15-a463269c87df

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

History

Date received : 31 August 2017

Date accepted : 24 October 2018

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Human biology

Keywords: infertility,lifestyle,quality of life,sterility,stress

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Human biology

Keywords: infertility, lifestyle, quality of life, sterility, stress

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Lifestyle and fertility: the influence of stress and quality of life on female fertility

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Asian Journal of Quality of Life (AjQoL)

Most cited references 109

Stress revisited: a critical evaluation of the stress concept.

Women's emotional adjustment to IVF: a systematic review of 25 years of research.

Infertility and psychological distress: a critical review of the literature.

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Cited by 31

Most referenced authors 986