A study that came out last year claims to have proven that women with higher stress levels will have a more difficult time conceiving than women who aren’t stressed.  The study, which was conducted in the U.K. on about 300 women between the ages of 18 and 40, showed that based on levels of stress hormones in saliva, those who were more stressed out were less likely to get pregnant within the six month span of the testing.

The study claims to have weighted factors like frequency of sex, age and alcohol use in order to get more precise results in order to verify the data.  But one question they don’t answer is — so what?

What good does it do to prove stress makes it harder for couples who are trying to conceive to actually succeed?

There is absolutely no worse bit of advice that you can give someone experiencing infertility than to tell them it will help them if they relax.  If stress makes it even more difficult, simply the fact that stress adds to the problem would then increase the stress.

Next time, save the study dollars for solutions to infertility rather than identifying issues that are likely to make things harder for couples who are struggling.