For years researchers have studied the relationship between chronic stress and infertility. Chronic stress is a state of prolonged anxiety from  internal or external pressures, real or imagined, which may cause various  physical symptoms. While chronic stress rarely causes infertility by itself,  the consequences of chronic stress may actually play a part in up to 30% of all  infertility problems. Infertility treatment can be so stressful that many Kansas City fertility doctors require patients go through some type of psychological counseling to learn  coping mechanisms.

Recently University of California, Berkeley, researchers published their findings on how stress causes sexual dysfunction and infertility in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of June 15, 2009.

Researchers discovered a critical piece of information in how increased levels of stress hormones - glucocorticoids such as cortisol - work against the body’s reproductive system. Studies found that glucocorticoids appear to affect fertility in two ways, first by inhibiting the body's main reproductive hormone, gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH). Suppression of GnRH in the brain by glucocorticoids prevents the pituitary from releasing the gonadotropins luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone which affects ovulation. Limiting GnRH also leads to a drop in estradiol, testosterone and sexual activity. 

Secondly, stress increases brain levels of a small protein  hormone called gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone, or GnIH. This reproductive hormone directly inhibits GnRH. Glucocorticoids boost levels of GnIH which in  turn suppresses GnRH, thus curtailing reproduction. Researchers drew their conclusions from experiments conducted in rats and from inferences of the effect of GnIH in birds.

Chronic stress can have a measurable effect on human infertility.  Research published in Fertility and Sterility in 2005 showed that women who scored highest on a stress level questionnaire ovulated 20% fewer eggs compared with women who indicated they were  less stressed. They also found that of those who produced eggs, those who were most stressed were 20% less likely to attain successful fertilization.