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If you've been trying to get pregnant for a long time, you've probably already heard your share of advice on de-stressing toward your ultimate goal of a healthy baby. If you're just getting started on the family-building journey, fellow long-timers will tell you -- keep your struggle to yourself, lest you hear the dreaded remarks meant as support from loved ones. Hopefully, you're not hearing "Just relax!" too often, since that simple well-meaning tidbit can do just the opposite of soothing your anxious nerves.

Truth is, there's something to the old adage.

Before you slam this magazine shut right now out of frustration, read through the following findings that lend credence to the idea that, yes, your mind and overall well-being can be powerful tools that work either with or against you in trying to conceive. What's more, finding support to help you feel more in control (if not relaxed) can actually be the easy part.

The Old Chicken & Egg Question

Which came first -- the stress or the infertility? It's well known to all that infertility can cause stress. Researchers have also tried to tease out whether the opposite is true -- whether stress can actually cause, or at least exacerbate, subfertility and infertility.

Animal and human studies have pointed to a connection between stress and reproduction. The somewhat circular path from stressful event to bodily response involves perception, brain neurotransmitters (such as serotonin), and endocrine (hormonal) system functioning. Some women may not ovulate as often (or ever, in extreme cases) when under a great deal of physical or emotional stress. Stress can also disrupt the various hormone levels required for both good quality ovulation and an optimal uterine lining for implantation.

Amenorrhea, absence of a menstrual period, can be caused by a number of stressful conditions, such as eating disorders and over-exercise. In a study published in 2003 (Fertility & Sterility, October), researchers in Pennsylvania looked at connecting amenorrheic women to emotional support therapy. Their findings include support for "the notion that a combination of mild psychological stress and subtle metabolic imbalance plays a causal role" in amenorrhea.

Men are not as well-represented as women in the scientific evidence of a link between fertility and emotional support needs. A June 2003 report in Fertility & Sterility by researchers in Italy claims to have confirmed a relationship between psychosocial variables and seminal status. The study compared men with low sperm count and those with normal counts in a clinic setting before any of the subjects were diagnosed as having fertility problems. The findings: that the links between psychoticism (combined personality traits such as being aggressive, cold, egocentric, and more) and alexithymia (difficulty describing feelings) and oligozoospermic men were so strong that the researchers could predict, using those psychosocial factors, which of the men would have low sperm count. Alexithymia in particular was previously found to be associated with over-arousal to emotional stimuli and situational stressors. The authors of this study postulate that, among other possibilities, how a man handles emotions might impact his reproductive system function.

At least one expert downplays the connective findings of the Italian study, saying that he sincerely believes sperm production is not being affected by psychological status.

Dr. Larry Lipshultz, Chief of the Division of Male Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Baylor's Scott Department of Urology, states that "Certainly, men need emotional support as much as women, although they are less likely to discuss it with other men, or even to verbalize [their need] to their physicians."

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