About the rise of infertlity

(This is an old post, that for some reason never got posted. So I am posting it now. :) )
So it amazes me how many people are unable to conceive without help. I come across people literally EVERYDAY. I was looking online on why it seems the infertility rate has gone up so much. And the theory is because people are waiting until later in life to have kids. And as you get older your body and reproductive system changes making it harder to conceive. Here's an article I found that was interesting.

The Infertility Epidemic

We are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of infertility. Ironically, even in countries with severe overpopulation, one of the most common reasons for a visit to the doctor is the inability to have children. Twenty-five percent of modern couples in their mid-thirties everywhere in the world are infertile. From our teen years (when the last thing we really want is a child) to our midthirties (when we finally feel emotionally and financially secure enough to start a family), there is a twenty-five-fold decline in our ability to get pregnant. Let me explain.

Ironically, the incidence of infertility in teenagers is rare. For women in their early twenties, still only 1 to 2 percent are infertile. By their late twenties, however, 16 percent of women are infertile, and in their mid to late thirties, 25 percent are infertile. By age forty, more than half of women are infertile, and pregnancy beyond age forty-three is very uncommon. If you are in your thirties, have been working hard to establish yourself, and are now just casually thumbing through this booklet at your doctor’s office because you’re thinking maybe in a few years you might like to start a family, you should realize that there is a 25 percent chance you will not be able to do so without medical intervention. What accounts for this dramatic increase in infertility over the last forty years is just the woman’s biological clock, which correlates with her declining store of eggs. Even by the time you are just in your midtwenties, there is a 10 percent chance (of infertility).
The decreasing follicle pool and age related decline in female fertility you will have become infertile, even though five years earlier you would have had no problem at all getting pregnant. The biology of fertility in humans has not changed in the last forty thousand years. What has changed in the last few centuries is our life span and the age at which we first try to conceive.

Men and women are now able to obtain fuller educations, develop themselves in their careers, and contribute dramatically to the intellectual and economic prosperity of the modern world. This would not occur so readily if we were saddled with children as teenagers or in our early twenties. But this change in society is also the reason for the epidemic rise in infertility.

-- From Treating Infertility
by Sherman J. Silber


I don't post this to make every one get up and say, I really should have kids young. It was just an interesting thought. I am sure that in addition to being older, that the increase in refined sugar and super processed foods and the rate of obesity have a large part in infertility too. But that's just my thought on it.

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