Info about Fertility
Human fertility
Fertility represents the ability to produce a new life. Human fertility is influenced by the hormonal cycles both in the case of women and men. When a female is fertile, she can achieve pregnancy and when a man is fertile when he is virile. The hormonal cycle is more precise established in the case of women and it is related to the menstrual cycle. Although men can be fertile at any time, the quality of their sperm lowers occasionally. This is believed to being linked to their own internal cycle.
Women can achieve pregnancy during the whole menstrual cycle, there are just few days when the peak of their fertility is reached, and the days when a woman is most fertile are the two days before ovulation and the two that follow ovulation. This period of high fertility can be longer or shorter depending on each woman’s organism, just like the days when she is fertile vary from month to month in the case of the same woman. The reason why the time is limited for high fertility is that the ovule, the female reproductive cell, can be fertilized for at most 48 hours after the ovary releases it. In addition, sperm also survives into the uterus for 48 up to 72 hours (two to three days) with some exceptions when it lasts even five days. This information is used by some couple as method of contraception (the periods when the woman is not fertile) called rhythm method.
The average age for a girl in the United States to get her first menstruation is 12.5 years. However, most of them are not fertile immediately/ In the first year of menstrual cycle, 80 percent of the girls did not release an ovule, in the second year the percent decreases to 50, while in the sixth year this percent is just 10/ The peak fertility is reached between 22 and 26 years old and it lowers after 30. The reason is logical: a woman is born with a finite number of ovules and during her lifetime these are eliminated. When a women turns 30 she has only about 12 percent of the initial ovules and at the age of 40 this percent lowers to only 3%. The chances for a women of 30 years old to get pregnant in the first year of trials are about 75%, while for a women in her 40s the percent becomes is 44%.
The age also affects men, although no as rapidly as it does in the case of women. There were cases when men became father at the age of 94, which is impossible for women. However, the number of years passed influence the sperm mostly, the semen volume and the sperm morphology. The sperm produced by men between the age of 50 and 80 is 25 percent less efficient that the one produced when the men are aged between 20 and 50.
When human fertility is to as good as it should and procreation is hard to achieve, couples can follow different fertility treatments that will increase their chances of getting a baby.