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Why Does Smoking Affect Your Eggs?

Smoking damages both male and female fertility. If you are trying to get pregnant, you can greatly improve your chances by quitting smoking or keeping away from places thick with second-hand smoke. Cigarette smoke contains a toxin that can kill the eggs while they are still in your ovaries. Smoking also affects your circulation and digestive systems, which need to be healthy in order to successfully carry a fetus to term.

  1. Significance

    • The toxins that are in cigarette smoke are called polycyclic aromatic hyrdrocarbons (PAHs). When absorbed to the levels that a cigarette smoker inhales, the PAHs tell the female body to begin menopause. Naturally occurring menopause can often kill the eggs that are left in the ovaries. Women are born with all of the eggs for their entire lifetime, so even smoking well before menopause can kill many of the eggs.

    Warning

    • PAHs can be found in many other substances. These include char-broiled foods, mothballs, air pollution from burning coal tar and any cosmetics, ointments or shampoos made with coal tar. City dwellers will be more exposed to PAHs than country dwellers.

    Theories/Speculation

    • A ground-breaking study using genetically engineered mice confirmed smoking's damage to female eggs was done at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2001. This was originally to study why women who smoke often go into menopause much earlier than nonsmokers. A gene (nicknamed "Mater") was discovered that tells an egg to become an embryo. Smoking damages this communication. (See Resources below.)

    Size

    • Women are born with an average of two million oocytes ("pre-eggs"). However, due to one circumstance or another, a woman naturally looses most of these oocytes and they never ovulate. Only about 400 eggs ovulate and have any chance of becoming babies.

    Prevention/Solution

    • Quitting smoking will not guarantee pregnancy. You still need to be in generally good health. But smoking will greatly lessen the chances of becoming pregnant, especially in your thirties and onwards. Smoking slows down your circulation system, leaving your internal organs without the nutrition they need to thrive. On the flip side, smoking should not be used as a birth control method. It is not a reliable method of contraception, especially if you are below thirty.

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