After receiving a sincere inquiry about the distress of a diagnosis with no apparent medical cause, we consulted with specialists to clarify how much weight inheritance and the environment carry in the ability to conceive.
By Ehab Soltan
HoyLunes — A few days ago, we published a reflective article on infertility that resonated deeply with our community. Among the many responses and messages we received, there was one that made us stop. A reader, whom we will call Alicia to protect her privacy, wrote to us with a mix of frustration and bewilderment.
Alicia told us that both she and a coworker are going through exactly the same situation: they have been trying to conceive for some time without success. However, there is a difference that Alicia finds heartbreaking. While her colleague has identified a specific medical problem, all of Alicia’s tests — hormone analyses, ultrasounds, follow-ups — indicate that “everything is normal”. There is no clinical cause to explain it.
In her message, she posed a direct question loaded with meaning: “Is infertility hereditary?” Alicia wonders if, despite the negative results in current tests, there could be something in her genetic load, something inherited from her family, that is silently playing against her.
At HoyLunes, we take interaction with our readers very seriously. We don’t want to be just a source of information, but a space for accompaniment and response. That’s why we have gathered Alicia’s concern and consulted with several specialists in reproductive genetics and biology to offer a clear, rigorous, and, above all, human answer.
It is vital to remember, before getting into the subject, that the information set forth here is general and educational. Under no circumstances does it replace a personalized consultation with a specialist, as each reproductive history is unique and requires individualized analysis.
Here we share the conclusions of our research.
Fertility is Not a Piece That Breaks
The first thing the specialists have clarified for us is fundamental for changing the perspective: we tend to think of fertility as a switch. We believe that if the analyses are “good”, the system should function automatically. But the body is not a machine that executes orders; it is a system that evaluates risks.
Human biology, and specifically reproductive biology, does not operate in a mechanical way. Ovulation is not a reflex and unconditional act. It is the result of a constant evaluation that the body performs on its internal and external environment. Before releasing an egg, the organism responds — without words — to an essential metabolic and biological question:
Is it safe and viable to invest energy in creating life at this precise moment?
If the response the body perceives is uncertain or unstable, the system is not “failing”. What it does is hold back. It adjusts its priorities to guarantee the survival of the individual before reproduction.
Genetics: Not as a Sentence, But as a Sensitivity Threshold
Returning to Alicia’s question: Is infertility inherited? The short answer is: rarely in a direct way in the absence of specific pathologies (such as primary ovarian insufficiency or known genetic alterations).
The specialists explain to us that it is uncommon to inherit an “infertility gene” that determines, on its own, that a person will never be able to conceive. What genetics usually defines is something much more subtle, but decisive: your level of biological sensitivity or your tolerance threshold.
The genetic load influences key factors such as:
The initial ovarian reserve with which a woman is born.
The approximate age of menopause.
The predisposition to develop certain medical conditions that affect reproduction, such as endometriosis or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).
The way the metabolism responds to sustained stress or nutritional deficiencies.
Therefore, genetics does not decide in a binary way whether the system works or not. What it decides is when and to what stimuli the system begins to protect itself and to prioritize other functions over the reproductive one.
The Key Concept for Alicia: The Invisible Threshold
This is where Alicia’s situation makes sense from a biological perspective. Two women, like Alicia and her colleague, can have apparently similar lifestyles but obtain completely different reproductive results.
Why? Because the capacity to conceive depends not only on what you do, but on how much margin your specific biology has to tolerate certain imbalances before activating the pause mode.
Each body has a different limit, an invisible threshold. It is a point after which the organism stops considering that the environment is favorable for an energy investment as high as a pregnancy. This threshold does not appear in standard blood tests, it is not measured in a single hormone, and it does not generate an immediate alarm symptom.
But it is crossed. And when it is crossed, the system reduces its reproductive involvement to conserve energy. This adjustment determines when the system decides to advance or to wait, and it can be temporary or persistent, depending on how long the body remains above that sensitivity threshold.
The Signals the Body Perceives (and That Don’t Seem Important)
In Alicia’s case, where “everything is normal” clinically, it is possible that the body is reacting to a silent accumulation of daily signals that, for her specific genetic threshold, are interpreted as instability. The problem is not each habit separately. It is the consistency of the message your body receives every day.
We are not talking about chronic diseases or extreme events. We are talking about routines that the body perceives as metabolic stress factors:
Sleeping in a fragmented way, for few hours, or at late hours.
Waking up systematically with loud alarms or artificial stimuli instead of natural light.
Skipping meals, eating at irregular rhythms, or with low nutritional density.
Training physically intensely without allowing for adequate recovery.
Maintaining a constant state of mental alert or worry.
None of these factors is a pathology on its own. However, when they occur together and in a sustained way, they form a coherent pattern that sends a clear message to the biological system:
The environment is unstable.
Energy availability is uncertain.
The biological priority is to adapt and survive, not to reproduce.
The Pause is Not a Failure: It is a Documented Strategy
It is fundamental to understand that this response of the body is not a malfunctioning error. On the contrary, it is an evolutionary protection strategy.
When the organism detects imbalances — even if they are subtle to our perception — it can modify the complex hormone signal that regulates the ovulatory cycle. It does not do it to block fertility permanently, but to protect it until conditions are more favorable.
This phenomenon — the modulation of the reproductive axis by stress and available energy — is widely documented by multiple lines of scientific research:
It is documented that sustained stress can alter the hypothalamus-pituitary-ovarian axis, a key regulator of the cycle (Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology).
Chronic sleep deprivation modifies the hormone secretion necessary for reproduction (Mayo Clinic).
Alcohol consumption affects the quality of oocytes (American Society for Reproductive Medicine).
But we insist: the most relevant thing for cases like Alicia’s is not each factor separately, but their silent accumulation and how this interacts with her inherited biological sensitivity.
The Problem with the Current Model and the Opportunity for the Future
Reproductive medicine usually intervenes when the problem is already measurable. But biology changes long before becoming measurable: before a clear alteration appears in an analysis, before a clinical diagnosis, and long before the first fertility consultation.
This creates a distressing disconnection for many women, like our reader Alicia:
The woman feels, intuitively, that “something doesn’t fit” in her body.
But the standard clinical system fails to detect it with current tools.
In that space of uncertainty, the patient’s narrative is lost and frustration appears.
This is where the landscape of reproductive health must evolve, ceasing to be an exclusively clinical issue to become strategic. The future lies not only in perfecting assisted reproduction treatments or in new drugs. It lies in something much more complex and preventive:
In learning to interpret early biological signals long before they become a clinical problem.
This opens new and necessary lines of innovation for fertility clinics, digital health platforms, wellness brands, and companies focused on women’s health. The goal should not be just to “increase fertility” directly and artificially, but to develop tools and knowledge to prevent the biological system from entering pause mode without anyone noticing.
Re-reading the Language of the Body
Perhaps the most widespread mistake we make is not biological, but interpretive. We have learned to react to painful or obvious symptoms, but not to recognize the subtle adjustments our organism performs.
If your body slows down certain processes, like the reproductive one, it is not always failing. Sometimes, it is simply recalculating its priorities based on what it perceives. Fertility is not a function that is lost by magic from one day to the next. It is a dynamic capacity that the organism regulates according to the safety and energy it perceives in its environment.
And that perception does not depend only on big medical decisions. It depends, above all, on what you do every day… often without thinking about it.
Dear Alicia, and dear readers who identify with this: not everything that seems normal in a clinical analysis is biologically neutral for your specific body. And, fundamentally, not every difficulty in conceiving begins as a medical problem.
Sometimes, it begins as something much more subtle and silent:
An accumulation of daily signals of instability.
A biological tolerance margin that is reduced.
A wise system that decides to wait for a better moment.
Not because it can’t, but because, at this moment, its biology decides that it shouldn’t.
Sources and Reference Lines
These conclusions are supported by established lines of research in endocrinology and reproductive medicine:
Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology: Research on the relationship between stress and reproductive function.
Mayo Clinic: Analysis of how lifestyle and sleep impact female fertility.
American Society for Reproductive Medicine: Studies on the impact of alcohol consumption on oocyte quality.
NIH (National Institutes of Health): Documentation on hormonal regulation and the ovulation process.
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