Do you know that the amount of sleep you get each night directly affects your chances of getting pregnant?

Recent studies show that a lack of sleep, and working jobs that require shift work, may seriously compromise a woman’s ability to conceive and to have a healthy live birth. These serious findings are even more important for women who are interested or currently attempting IVF treatments to get pregnant. Sleep in moderation is optimal for IVF success.

Here’s how lack of sleep can lead to infertility:

• Missing your required number of sleep hours a night can impact your ability to conceive.
• Sleep has a powerful influence on the body’s hormonal system, which controls a woman’s cycle and regulates ovulation.
• Too little sleep leads to low leptin levels, the hormone responsible for appetite and which can impact ovulation.
• Insomniacs have a significantly higher level of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenocorticotropin, both of which can suppress a healthy fertility cycle.

The take-home message is clear: you could be doing “everything right” when it comes to preparing your body to conceive and bring a healthy baby to term. But with so much focus on external factors like your environment and what you put in your mouth, the time has come to add another aspect to this big equation: sleep.