Men and yeast have something in common: they use the same molecular process to ensure the integrity of their gene pool during reproduction. This is a recent finding by researchers from CNRS, Inserm and the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble. The scientists are studying yeast in order to shed light on the numerous cases of male infertility related to the malfunction of this process during spermatogenesis.

View the full article at Science Daily

Everyone experiences socialstress, whether it is nervousness over a job interview, difficulty meeting people at parties, or angst over giving a speech. In a new report, UCLA researchers have discovered that how your brain responds to social stressors can influence the body’s immune system in ways that may negatively affect health.

Lead author George Slavich, a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, and senior author Shelley Taylor, a UCLA professor of psychology, show that individuals who exhibit greater neural sensitivity to social rejection also exhibit greater increases in inflammatory activity to social stress.

And although such increases can be adaptive, chronic inflammation can increase the risk of a variety of disorders, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression.

The study appears in the current online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It turns out, there are important differences in how people interpret and respond to social situations,” Slavich said. “For example, some people see giving a speech in front of an audience as a welcome challenge; others see it as threatening and distressing. In this study, we sought to examine the neural bases for these differences in response and to understand how these differences relate to biological processes that can affect human health and well-being.”

View the full article at Medical News Today

Women with mental stress may have more trouble conceiving than their unstressed peers, a new study shows. Among 274 English women, all trying to get pregnant, those with the highest levels of alpha-amylase — a salivary biomarker for stress — had an estimated 12% reduction in their chance of getting pregnant each menstrual cycle, compared to women with the lowest levels.

These new results come from researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Oxford. Although the precise mechanisms by which stress hormones interfere with reproductive-system hormones are not entirely known, there is evidence that, in extreme cases, mental stress can even lead to lack of menstruation — missed periods. At least in this current study, however, there was no correlation between women’s levels of cortisol, another more commonly measured stress hormone, and their chance of conception.

Read the full article at Time

How do you stay in the moment and connect with your child and pregnancy after struggling with infertility, remembering a previous miscarriage or loss of a child (stillborn). There is no doubt that these feeling are normal and only natural.

If your situation was infertility, you are absolutely euphoric that you have finally accomplished what you have worked so hard for; but then you are scared about losing this child, having to repeat all of those complicated infertility treatments and will you get pregnant again?? But you are pregnant, right now!

If you have previously miscarried or carried full term and then lost your child, those same feelings arise leaving you to feel guarded, almost against the little one, so that if something happens again, you are prepared and not as connected. But deep down you know, no matter what happens, you are connected to your baby.

Our thoughts… I took a quick Google search and came up with this little known fact: we have approximately 50,000 thoughts per day. As you know, many of these thoughts will be positive ~ love, joy, gratitude, humorous, etc. While others will be negative ~ fear, worry, anger, jealously, etc.

Now… there are only two options to address our negative thoughts. We can feed and nurture the negative monster or we can starve and ignore him. By starving and ignoring the monster we are able to concentrate on a more positive and peaceful existence. Read the rest of this entry »

Women Who Conceive Within 6 Months Less Likely to Miscarry Again

How soon until we can try again? This is one of the first questions that women who have experienced a miscarriage will ask their doctor. And a new study suggests that there is no reason for many women to delay getting pregnant after a miscarriage. According to a new study, the sooner a woman conceives again, the better her chances of having a healthy pregnancy.

Specifically, women who conceive within six months after a miscarriage are less likely to miscarry again or experience other pregnancy-related complications when compared with women who wait for longer periods of time. The findings appear in the journal BMJ.

View the full article at Medicine Net