Is it taking you too long to conceive? Your increased weight could be a reason. As per researchers, couples in which both the partners are obese may take time to achieve pregnancy as compared to the non-obese counterparts.
As per the researchers, taking steps to lose weight may help reduce the time needed to conceive.
"A lot of studies on fertility and body composition have focused on the female partner, but our findings underscore the importance of including both partners," said Rajeshwari Sundaram from US National Institutes of Health's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
"Our results also indicate that fertility specialists may want to consider couples' body compositions when counselling patients," Sundaram said of the study that appeared online in the journal Human Reproduction.
The couples in the study were part of the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study, which examined the relationship between fertility and exposure to environmental chemicals.
The study enrolled 501 couples from Michigan and Texas from 2005 to 2009. The women kept a record of their monthly menstrual cycles, intercourse and the results of home pregnancy tests.
The researchers compared the average time to achieve a pregnancy among couples in the non- obese group to that of the couples in the obese group with a BMI of 35 or greater.
The couples were followed until pregnancy or for up to one year of trying to conceive.
With inputs from IANS
