How can lack of sleep lead to infertility?

What if infertility can be partly blamed on how many hours of sleep you get a night. OR hours you don’t get?

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.

• The average woman (30 to 60 years old) gets only 6 hours 41 minutes of sleep during the work week, according to the National Sleep Foundation, when she really needs 7 to 9 hours.

• 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 adrenocorticotropic, 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.