Trying to conceive a baby is one of the most exhilarating, frightening, all encompassing heroic adventures you will ever attempt. Most couples conceive within 6 six months to a year of actively ‘trying’. Meaning, you don’t use contraception, have sex and still aren’t pregnant after 12 months. If you are one of the 15 or so percent of couples to experience infertility your world has been turned upside down, inside out, and right side in. You have probably researched for hours, abandoned all unhealthy habits, and assumed positions for conception that you didn’t know were possible. And, most likely, abandoned smoking the herb. Well guess what? Recent research suggests imbibing the herb does NOT appear to affect fertility in men or women.
Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health is the lead author of the recently published study. She is also the first to evaluate the link between fecundability—the average per-cycle probability of conception—and marijuana use via the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The study was a web-based prospective cohort study of North American couples, surveying 4,194 women aged 21 to 45 living in the United States or Canada. The data revealed during the period from 2013 through 2017, approximately 12 percent of female participants and 14 percent of male participants reported smoking doobers a couple of months before completing the baseline survey. After 12 cycles of follow-up, conception probabilities were similar among couples that used marijuana and those that did not.
And, although the researchers stated, “Future studies with day-specific data on marijuana use might better be able to distinguish acute from chronic effects of marijuana use, and evaluate whether effects depend on other factors.” The preliminary data shows no correlation between smoking doobers and fertility.
In addition, just think about the generations before you who have been smoking marijuana and conceiving babies for hundreds if not thousands of years. The Rastafarians alone are more than ample anecdotal evidence supporting a healthy connection between the herb and fertility. Bob Marley, just one Rasta was responsible for dozens of children.
Not to mention, the study in the 1980’s by Dr. Dreher. “Dreher and her team compared babies of Jamaican women who inhaled the herb during pregnancy and those who did not. The researchers tested infants on a variety of functions one, three, and 30 days after birth. The findings concluded cannabis-exposed babies scored significantly higher in their reflex tests as well as tests of basic functions like blood pressure and heart rate. The infants of cannabis-using moms were also less irritable and more alert.”
Point being, and hope for this article is, if you are trying to get pregnant and use cannabis take cannabis off your list of worries.
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