Stress - effects on overall health, pregnancy and fertility

In this episode we touch on how stress effects your overall health. We also talk about the lack of research out there on the effects of stress on pregnancy and fertility with a little of my own opinion in there. We also discuss where to seek help for stress and different ways to cope.

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and in our everyday lives, Stress is an important topic. 

So take a listen!

Transcript

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Hey, guys. And welcome to another episode of four vaginas only in this episode we are going to be talking about stress now, in this period of cove in 19 stress relief. Talking about stress the different ways that we can combat stress is very important. I and no means whatsoever a psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm not even a what we would call a general practitioner and internal medicine and the like. I am a gynecologist, so I am only going to talking about stress in my own opinion and perhaps touch on how it can possibly affect pregnancy on and fertility. But whether or not it does or does not do that, we're gonna talk about a little bit more. But first as usual, before we do anything on $4 on Lee, we cue the music. Hello and welcome to four vaginas. Only the podcast about everything. Female. I'm your host, Dr Celestine, bringing you important information about understanding your health and body in the way you wish your doctor would actually explain it. All right, now, in this episode like I talked about, we're gonna be talking about stress, which I think is very important during these times and in general, I know I'm feeling the effects of stress a lot these days. I have a lot of different things going on. A lot of different aspects of my life are not exactly where I would like them to be. And I've experienced some hardship recently. Some stressors recently and, you know, honestly, I'm even finding it difficult to cope here and there. So this episode is also helping me a little bit. Findings of resource is for myself. So never feel ashamed that you're stressed out. Never feel ashamed if you feel like stress is affecting other parts of your life. But look for help, you know, look for different ways to cope and we'll talk about that a little bit more as well. So first I wanna introduce myself. I am Dr Celestine and I am the host of Four vaginas on Lee. I'm an obstetrician gynecologist on board certified all of these opinions, whether it's on my podcast or on my social media platforms. They're all my own opinion. I'm never I'm not trying to give any medical advice per se on this podcast. I can't give any medical advice specific to your situation I'm not your doctor. So as much as I would love to be everyone's doctor, I'm not. And in this episode, we're going to be discussing stress. Ah, lot of the research out there about stress and how it effects pregnancy. Infertility is very mixed, so we'll discuss that a little bit as well. But first, let's talk about stress in general, so stress affects everyone. I don't think there's a single person who can say that they've never been stressed out in their in their entire life. Everyone from time to time experiences some sort of stress. Now, whether it's short term stress or long term stress, whether you can cope with it better than other people, you know that's a factor. Some people recover quicker from stress. Some people, it doesn't really affect that greatly. Everyone's different, but everyone has experienced that. Everyone knows what I'm talking about now, according to the National Institutes of Health, and according to me, not all stress is bad. Okay, so sometimes we have stress in short situations, like your stress before you take an exam. Sometimes it can actually boost your focus a little bit. Sometimes stress can motivate you a little bit more to get things done. So not all times are is stress a bad thing? What makes dress bad is when you are not able to cope with it, and it creates some long standing or long term effects. So also, according to National Institutes of Health, it could affect many different parts of your body. It can affect your digestive system. It can affect your immune system. It can affect your cardiovascular system. It affects your sleep habits, and if you have strain over a long period of time, you can create some serious health problems. Sometimes stress could be related to developing heart disease, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety and diabetes. And that's all from the National Institute of Health as well. The Mayo Clinic even breaks it down a little further into stress affecting three different categories. Your body, your mood as well as your behavior so it can affect your body can cause headaches, muscle tension, sleep problems Like I mentioned, it can affect your mood. It can cause anxiety. It can decrease your focus and motivation. It can cause you to feel very overwhelmed, which, to be honest, is what I'm feeling right now, and it can affect your behavior so it can cause overeating or undereating. It can cause or lead to the misuse or abuse of drugs and alcohol, and it can cause things like angry outbursts or tearful outburst so stress we're not immune to it. Um, and long term effects can be on your body and the systems that I mentioned, but there's different ways to cope with it. And there's different things that I'm going to talk about in order to help yourself, especially during not only during this time of covert 19 but during your lifetime. Like I said, we're not immune to stress from time to time. So let's touch a little bit upon, um, pregnancy and fertility and its possible connection to stress. Now this is a mixed bag, a convoluted picture. There's many different studies out there, but overall, I'm going to say that there's no direct correlation that we have proven when it comes to adverse outcomes or bad outcomes in pregnancy and fertility when it comes to just general stress. Okay, the research is just not there for me, too, particularly, say that. But I will say, especially in reading for my own knowledge and coming across things throughout my education and training that I am a believer that stress does affect your body. And I would say that if you have severe stress that it could potentially affect you know, your pregnancy because it's still your body and you're growing a baby, and that is stressful enough. And when you add severe stress on it, I'm talking like a death in the family or just something major that happens in your life that really changes the way you behave can affect your pregnancy. And this is why. Because we know that in general, stress can cause different issues even when you're not pregnant. Such as like I mentioned not eating properly, which can affect your entire body and affect your pregnancy. Also, problems sleeping. Also, just dress in general, we know, can decrease the effectiveness of your immune system. And it's those things that could potentially affect the pregnancy. Not saying for sure. I'm just saying when you think about it, it sort of makes sense, and I think that we need more research and more studies out there to prove and to see exactly how stress and how much stress affects a pregnancy. Okay, but I can't say that for sure. Now, this is just my sort of hypothesis. Maybe I should do a research study. Right. Um, but pregnancy in general is stressful, So sometimes you can have financial difficulty. Sometimes you could be moving. Changing your job. Waiting for results of certain tests during the pregnancy can make you anxious. If you had a previous miscarriage, it could make you anxious or stressed out during a current pregnancy. So in general, no, I can't say that it's proven that stress will do anything to your pregnancy. But I think we need more studies because I, you know, it does affect your body, and your body is growing a baby, and I think the correlation could be there. All right, Same thing with stress and infertility. So there's also no proof that stress affects your ability to get pregnant. Now, on the S. R. M website, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, A S R. M has an interesting little video. It's a micro video, and they say it's called Just relax. It'll happen. A debate on the relationship between stress and infertility, and it's a quick little video If you want to look it up, it's on S r m dot or GE, and it states just kind of like how I stayed with pregnancy, that Yeah, there's research studies out there, but you can't correlate it. You have to look at research studies in a certain way. You have to see how many patients are in the research study are their biases. You know there's lots into going to re reading research. You can't just believe everything you read. But there's our studies out there that are trying to look at stress and infertility. However, all the research and randomized controlled trials still have very conflicting data. So I can't really say that even though I've read these studies that it's proving anything because a lot of the data is very conflicting, even when it comes to how stress hormones affect fertility, how it affects your hypothalamus pituitary axis, which a lot of people talk about. There's conflicting data, the elevated and elevated level of cortisol and how it affects infertility and pregnancy. That is conflicting relaxing conditions and things that you do to relax, how that affects it that has conflicting data, so overall when it comes to infertility and pregnancy in relation to stress. There is very little to no effect that we can prove right now on a relationship of stress causing adverse outcomes in for infertility and in pregnancy just because of the conflicting data. So we need to keep in mind, though, that there are certain conditions that you can develop because of stress that may affect these two things. But like I said, more research needs to be done. But in my mind, I'm thinking that, you know, if you really do a good study on this, we might see some connection. Also, if anybody knows of any really good studies or emerging studies that are coming out talking about how stress affects infertility and pregnancy, please let me know. Send me a message about it. I love to learn and to read new things. I'm never one that thinks that I know all the answers. There's always, you know, there's stuff out there all the time that I might not be aware of yet, So send it my way, teach me something. I've been in school a long time, which means I love to learn it and know that this process is a continual learning career that I'm in. All right now whether you are pregnant or not. Like I said, stress hits us all. So there's different things that you can do. Different resource is that I wanted to just talk about to help you cope with stress. First and foremost, talk about it, Talk about it. Okay. Keeping things in word is never good. Trust me. I know I talked to your family that you could that you trust friends that you trust about what's going on with you. Sometimes just letting it out is helpful. You can also talk to your doctor. Okay? Whether it's your general doctor, whether it's your O B doctor, whether you have ah, psychologist or psychiatrist, talk to them about it, work through it, especially if you feel like you're at the level where you might need some therapy or some counseling, which are some great tools they these types of physicians are. These types of counselors can help you identify the cause of your stress, and different mechanisms are different ways to help you cope with that stress, because what we're trying to do is minimize. We can't stop stress from happening right, but we can hopefully minimize how long it affects you. Therefore minimizing the general health effects or negative health effects from this stress. So different outlets are different. Things that I know have helped me and helped others. I'll just put that out there really quickly. One exercise that helps a lot of people meditation. I know that the headspace app is really popular these days. I've downloaded it, but I haven't used it yet. I told you many times I don't know. It's so hard for me to jump into meditation, but I don't feel like if I jumped into it. Maybe I would like it. Give me time. I'll get back to you also, you could do things such as yoga, breathing exercises, deep breathing exercises, also relaxing hobbies. For some people, it's very relaxing to clean or cook, and those things can help for me. In particular, I love music, so listening to music can help me. Certain songs, especially that connect to home feeling, can help me also singing I love to sings and I'm just belting out a tune can help get that aggression or that stress out Gardening can help a lot of people just getting your hands in there in the dirt, planting different things. Growing something new can help combat some stress. And those were just some ideas. Some things you can try, but if it's not working, I really urge you to see or speak to a doctor, especially if you're having some things that might not be or we're not sure if it's related to stress. If you're having symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness, paying down your arm or shoulder, I recommend that you seek medical care immediately because that could be other life Threatening conditions that are not stress shut is not fun. You can also mimic other conditions, the effects that you have on your body from stress. So any severe conditions seek medical help if coping, or if the things you're doing trying to cope are not working, whether you're pregnant or not, seek professional help as well and talk about it. Talk about it, talk about it. It's important, especially during this era, this pandemic of covert 19. There's also therapists you can talk to on Web chats. You know there's different ways to talk to people you can talk to your friends and family on your zoom chats. Just make sure that even though we're physically distancing that we're not keeping things inside, that could be potentially detrimental to our overall health. I just wanted Thio not only give you guys some resource is, but also talk about how stress can affect your body. Stress is not something that should just be overlooked, especially if you're not good at coping with it just yet, especially if it's affecting other parts of your mind and your body and your life. And I just wanted to get this episode out during this covert 19 pandemic because I feel like not on. Lee has stressed touched me in my life, but it's probably touching the lives of many of you out there. So thank you for listening to this podcast episode. Please send me any messages or questions on my email Dr. C at F ve only dot com You can also go to my Instagram page and at four vaginas on Lee. We could talk there and, um yeah, good luck out there to everybody stay safe. Bye.