Fertility · 5 min read

Does lifestyle really affect fertility?

This is a topic with a great deal of advice attached to it and not all of it is worth following. Some lifestyle factors make a genuine, measurable difference. Others are sold hard and do very little.

It is also worth saying at the outset: if you are having difficulty conceiving, it is almost certainly not your fault. People carry an enormous amount of guilt about this, usually undeserved, and often handed to them by someone else.

What does make a difference

Smoking, for both partners. This is the clearest and most consistent finding in the field, it affects egg and sperm quality, and stopping helps. If you take one thing from this article, take this one.

Weight at either extreme. Being significantly over or significantly under a healthy weight affects ovulation. Modest, sustained change helps; crash dieting does not.

Heavy alcohol intake, and heat exposure for men — long hot baths, laptops on laps, prolonged driving. These are small effects individually but they are easy to change.

What matters less than people say

Most supplements marketed for fertility have little evidence behind them. Folic acid before and during pregnancy is genuinely important, for the baby rather than for conceiving. Beyond that, be sceptical of anything sold in a bottle with a photograph of a baby on it.

Specific positions, timing rituals, and lying still afterwards do not change the outcome. Regular intercourse across the fertile window is what matters, and the more elaborate the instruction, the less evidence tends to sit behind it.

Stress

This one deserves care. Trying to conceive without success is genuinely stressful, and being told that the stress is the cause adds guilt to an already difficult situation.

The honest position is that severe, sustained stress can affect cycles, but stress is far more often the consequence of infertility than the cause of it. 'Just relax and it will happen' is not medical advice and it is not kind.

What to actually do

Stop smoking, both of you. Move towards a healthy weight if you are a long way from one. Keep alcohol moderate. Take folic acid if you are trying. Then get evaluated rather than spending another year adjusting things at the margins.

If you have been trying for a year — or six months if you are over thirty-five — that is the point at which an evaluation is more useful than another lifestyle change.

Written and reviewed by Dr. Hardik Vansjaliya, M.S. (Obs & Gynaec), D.M.A.S., F.M.A.S., Fellow in IVF, M.B.A. (Healthcare), Gujarat Medical Council Reg. G/24936. Published 2026-07-04. Last checked 2026-07-04.

This article is general information, not medical advice about your own situation. If something here applies to you, come and talk to us.