A team of researchers from Korea analyzed the self-reported sleep habits of more than 650 women before undergoing IVF and broke them into three groups - short sleepers (4-6 h per day), moderate sleepers (7-8 hpd) and long sleepers (9-11 hpd). Overall, pregnancy rates were 10% higher in the moderate sleepers than in the remaining groups.

Getting enough sleep benefits reproductive hormone secretion, according to the study’s authors. But while that could be helpful for overall fertility, as well as IVF outcomes, too much sleep may disrupt circadian rhythms - the internal biological clocks that govern sleep cycles - as well as certain hormone cycles, thus impairing fertility.

While researchers do not fully understand how sleep affects fertility and pregnancy, or to what degree, the new study argues that moderate sleep should be recommended to patients undergoing IVF cycles in order to improve their outcomes.

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