Stress

When confronted with certain life events, I try to imagine something that most people probably don't.  I think about what me 20,000 years ago would have done.  My mother is an armchair archeologist and I read National Geographic a lot over the years, so this is probably why I go to this place.  I'm not trying or haven't even tried dating Adam and Eve time so give me a pass on this one.  I don't know when Creationists say the Earth was created or when modern homo sapiens came around so I'm just trying to get into a ballpark range here.

Imaging me 20,000 years ago is very helpful in the following areas; eating (food), exercise, and stress.  This idea helps me realize that how my body and mind respond or process information is the same now as it would be for me thousands of years ago.  We've not evolved that much.  And in this case, I use my idea to address the theory that stress is a possible cause of infertility.  My theory is that a certain percentage of any given human clan or population center has always been infertile for physical or physiological reasons.  Their lines died out. 

The rest of the human clans did reproduce successfully and if you're reading this, congratulations, their success is your existence.  And early humans (20,000 years ago) and really, up until and during the industrial revolution and in most places on earth currently, women were/are really stressed.  And a large percentage of the population still got pregnant.  So stress like war, famine, or at least severe political and social instability.  Take the top five countries in total fertility rate: Niger, Uganda, Mali, Somalia, Burundi.  The total fertility rate is a figure for the average number of children that would be born per woman if all women lived to the end of their childbearing years and bore children according to a given fertility rate at each age.  The United States and other relatively prosperous nations are at 124 and below on the world's list.  I'd say women in Niger, Uganda, Mali, Somalia, and Burundi are probably stressed to levels Western women couldn't imagine and they're getting pregnant, many, many times over.  


Now I can buy the fact that "nervous" women have a harder time getting pregnant.  And my only evidence there is that I'm a nervous person and I'm not getting pregnant which is getting pretty comical.  I mean, if I knew that I never had to use birth control, I would have saved myself quite a bit of worry in the past.  So, that's my only correlating fact for that theory.    

So, when I get the odd, random advice to go get a manicure or a massage to "take it easy" and "relax" so I can get pregnant, I reply that as long as I live in modern America, I'm about as relaxed as I'll ever be.