Caffeine: Not For Pregnant Ladies Or Perhaps Aspiring Hopefuls

Doctors often urge pregnant women to stay away from caffeine — even the harmless green tea that has negligible doses. But now, a new study reveals that ladies hoping to conceive should stay away the drug either. Caffeine can reduce the activity of muscles in the fallopian tubes, which carry eggs from the ovaries to the uterus. Past research also shows that among women who drank at least three cups of coffee a day, fertility decreased by 27%. But before you pick up the phone to tell your aspiring pregnant friend to toss out all her coffee, there are a few other factors to consider.

Sean Ward,  one of the researchers, points out that these findings may not reflect everyone:

…caffeine affects everybody in different ways, and therefore may affect people’s fertility differently, Ward said. “It depends on the person ”” how long caffeine affects you, and then the downstream effects as well,” which are the bodily processes that are then affected because of the caffeine in the body, Ward said.

Also, the new research by Ward was performed on mice fallopian tubes. Ward says that he would like to conduct the same experiment in humans to verify these findings. The caffeine used in the study was not the kind used in coffee either, although it was measured to be the equivalent of two cups of coffee for humans. Skepticism welcome.