Thin People Make Babies Better!

2 blue lines
Originally uploaded by ryan loucks photography

Here's another reason to stay fit (reason #2,064, I think. I lost count):

Thin People Make Babies Better!

Notice I didn't say make better babies, I said make babies better. It's like the old Starkist commercials where Charlie Tuna is playing the violin in his tuxedo and they tell him, "Starkist doesn't want tuna with good taste, Starkist wants tuna that tastes good!"

Here's The Fit Doc scoop:

Researcher report in the Feb 2008 edition of the journal Human Reproduction that a woman's chance of getting pregnant goes down as her weight goes up.

They looked at over 3000 women and their partners with no obvious reason for infertility, and who have spent a year or more without contraception and without getting pregnant. The researchers followed them for another year, or until they became pregnant or started fertility treatments. They found that obese women (BMI >30) had a 4% drop in their chance of getting pregnant for each 1 point increase in BMI. For very obese women (BMI 35-40) the probability of pregnancy was between 26 and 43% lower than for normal weight women (BMI 21-29).

Obesity is known to be a risk factor for low fertility due to anovulation. This, however is the first study to look at obesity and fertility in women who are ovulating normally, but are subfertile.

According to lead author Dr. J W Van Der Steeg, "Owing to the fact that more women of child-bearing age are becoming overweight and obese, this is a worrying finding." Since women in developed countries are putting off childbirth at the same time they are putting on weight, the two factors combine to lower fertility even more than either one alone.

The cause for the relationship between lower fertiltiy rate in obese women is unknown, but Dr Van Der Steeg thinks it may be related to the hormone leptin. Leptin is secreted by fatty tissue and is know to regulate appetite. Like many hormones, leptin may have additional effects in different parts of the body. "There is evidence that leptin may influence the process of steroid production by the ovaries'" he stated. "It is possible that obese women may have disturbed hormone levels, which decrease the chances of successful fertilization and implantaion."

"Although this study does not show whether women's chances of conceiving rise if they lose weight, because of the size of the cohort, with comparable women in different weight groups, we hypothesize that losing weight will increase the chance to conceive without treatment. Therefore, we would advise women to lose weight. Although the effect on better fertility is not proven, it is shown that the chance of a serious complication during pregnacy and labor is reduced (with weight loss)."

When Does 1+1=3?

I read a great story this morning about how helping people out makes us all better.

From The Education of an Accidental CEO, by David Novak.

Back in 1991, when Novak was the president (I think) of Pepsi, he had a meeting with Magic Johnson.

Novak writes:

I asked Magic if he had always been a superstar, if he was always that much better than everyone else growing up.

"You know," Magic said, "I learned a lot back when I was in the junior leagues. My team would win, like, eighty to twenty every time, and I would score maybe seventy of those points. But at the end of the game, everyone was always angry. Not just the other team, but my teammates and their parents. I monopolized the ball so much that nobody else got to shoot, so no one was having any fun.

"I realized that I was going to have to get more people involved or no one was ever going to like me. That was when I decided I was going to learn how to become a great passer. We still won eighty to twenty, bt I'd only score maybe twenty points and the rest of the team would score the rest. The parents liked me, my teammates were happy, everyone was working together. I had learned how to go from 'me' to 'we.'

"Later," Magic continued, "when I got to the Lakers, I told my teammate Byron Scott that I was going to help take him to another level, that he was going to make the All-star team, and he did. I told Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that he was going to score more points than anyone in NBA history because I was going to throw him the passes that would get him there. When Kareem broke the record...the first thing he did was come over and give me a hug and tell me, 'I owe this to you.'"

That really drove home tho me this whole idea of synergy, of one plus one equaling three. If everyone knew his role and fulfilled it to the best of his abilities, than the whole would invariably be greater than the sum of its parts.

-------------------------------

Here's to all of you in the MDB health and fitness community who are helping to make the other guys all-stars, too!

Kevin