I know I’ll see this everywhere on X after i post it - with no hat-tip…. But oh well - “esp those based on vegetarianism, may cause women to have fertility problems…” this is 1988. pic.twitter.com/95ScgbwwpO
— Wejolyn 🇺🇸 (@Wejolyn) August 28, 2023
Professor Parke said that during the 1,000-calorie phase 37 of the women developed hormonal disturbances.
There were two types of disturbances with about the same frequency.
In one, no egg was developed in the cycle and the levels of one hormone, estradiol, were low. In the other, there were lower than normal levels of another hormone, progesterone, which protects the embryo during its first weeks of development in the womb. A deficiency in this hormone would seriously hinder development.
Professor Parke said gynecologists had been aware that heavy dieting affected fertility but it had not been known that even a small weight loss could affect fertility.
Fertility could be affected even when the woman did not fall below her ideal weight she often failed to notice any disturbance because the menstrual flow occurred normally.
The younger the woman, the greater the possibility that the weight loss would lead to such disturbances. Professor Parke said, "We noted that diet-caused disturbances appeared much more often and those age up to 24 years old than in the 25 to 30 age group," he said. The reason could be that accessibility of the menstrual cycle increases until the mid-40s.
The probability of a disturbance rose in relation to the amount of weight shed or the further the weight fell below the ideal body weight.
The composition of the diet was decisive. With the same loss of weight, a vegetarian diet or one rich in carbohydrates was much more likely to cause a disturbance than a balanced diet that contained meat and milk products.
The team's findings have been published in Fertility and Sterility a medical journal in the U.S.
