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High FSH?
Old Eggs?
By Randine Lewis, Ph.D., author of The Infertility
Cure
Additional Contribution by , L.Ac., Wellness Within
"High FSH"
"Poor Responder"
"Old Eggs"
"Advanced Maternal Age"
"Donor Egg Candidate"
These are the most devastating reproductive diagnoses a woman can
receive. The majorities of my patients who have high FSH, are over
35 years of age, and have been labeled this way. Yet, nobody starts
out with these diagnoses. Most women end up with these labels after
years of failed reproductive treatments.
Laura had been given each of these diagnoses from her reproductive
endocrinologist, and has just given birth to her son, whom she conceived
naturally. 44 year old Kathleen was told she would never become
a mother unless she used a younger woman’s donated eggs. Her
doctor was wrong. When her reproductive system was nurtured and
cared for naturally, she conceived her healthy daughter on her own.
Last week a reporter queried me on a quote a reproductive endocrinologist
gave her:
“2/3 of women over the age of 35 require medical intervention
in order to conceive.”
These attitudes are not only wrong, they are downright harmful.
Keep in mind there is a large financial incentive for you to believe
these demoralizing prognoses – reproductive medicine is an
ever growing multi billion dollar per year cash industry, whose
financial rewards grow exponentially when you submit to the belief
that your only chance of becoming a parent is through medical intervention.
They make no money when you conceive on your own. They make maximum
profit when multiple women are involved in helping you achieve a
pregnancy at all costs.
Certainly, some women do require medical intervention. Yet, it should
not be offered as a blanket solution to all infertility problems.
It is accepted medical tradition that the simplest, least aggressive,
and most cost effective treatments should always be exhausted first.
Yet most women who ask their doctors “Is there anything I
can do to improve my reproductive status?” are told definitively
“No, you are simply too old.” Since most insurance companies
don’t cover infertility treatment, and since there is an automatic
medicolegal defense against litigation (“You came to me infertile,
what’s the damage?”), Western reproductive specialists
feel safer in offering a more aggressive approach, and we capitulate
to their treatments because we are in a state of panic.
Medical charts abound with these types of unsettling comments: “Mrs.
Nesbitt is a three time clomid failure.” “Ms. Callahan
is a poor responder to maximum stimulation, and an IVF failure.
Recommend donor.” Then they come to me as a last resort, hopeless,
and depleted - financially and spiritually. They don’t feel
good about themselves, their bodies, or their lives.
My intention is not to bash reproductive medicine, but to put it
in its proper perspective. Yes, we hear of reproductive successes
when ‘infertile’ celebrities end up with a couple of
offspring in toe, most often the result of someone else’s
eggs. Yet, month after month, and year after year, I pick up the
pieces of broken lives, broken promises, and broken dreams. And
the stories don’t ever change. The histories begin with unexplained
infertility after one year of unprotected intercourse, and end up
with “IVF failure, recommend donor.” Every time.
I propose that reproductive medicine more often than not fails us!
Yet we are the ones who are conditioned to feel that it’s
our fault when their drugs don’t work on us.
Note by : Fertility and Sterility, The Official Journal of the American
Society for Reproductive Medicine, p.327
2001 - There were 65,363 transfers (3.1 average # of embryos transferred)
totaling 291,710 embryos of which there were 18,703 deliveries,
which resulted in 26,254 births (allowing for multiples). This calculates
to 33.4% of transfers that resulted in live births and 84.9% of
the embryos transferred that did not make it.
Reproductive medicine has one thing to offer women to help them
conceive – that single drug is the all powerful, commanding
hormone, FSH. And if you have any of those dreaded reproductive
diagnoses listed above, FSH will cease to be effective in your body.
And you know the old adage, “If all you have is a hammer,
the whole world looks like a nail.” When you are no longer
the perfect nail, they try to bend and straighten and flatten you
with the only tool they have.
There is another option that has been grossly overlooked. The reason
it is overlooked is that physicians do not learn anything about
reproductive health when they study medicine. In medical school,
we were trained to treat disease. And infertility is not a disease.
It is an epidemic of ignorance. We have not been taught how to care
for our own reproductive systems.
Let’s pretend for a minute that there are no such things as
hammers and nails. Consider the possibility that we have all of
our fertility solutions within our very makeup. Ovarian health depends
upon three factors – nutritional status, blood flow, and the
balance of reproductive hormones with stress hormones.
1 Nutritional status – the reproductive system,
like the rest of our body, has certain nutritional requirements.
Most of my patients are asked to avoid sugar, wheat, and pasteurized
dairy.
Note by : We also find that returning patients to traditional diets
of whole foods, meat, fish and fruit has a lasting and profound
effect upon our patients’ ability to conceive. There are numerous
articles on our web site, www.wellnesswithin.com that refer patients
to superb books and articles showing the connection between nutrition
and fertility.
2 Blood flow – a woman of age 40 typically has five times
less blood flow to her ovaries than a woman of age 20. This dramatically
impedes the attention that the ovary requires during the follicles’
all important growth phase, the 90 day process before ovulation
in which the quality of the egg is determined. The follicles insist
upon adequate oxygenation and circulation to function efficiently
(i.e., with a healthy egg, capable of fertilization and implantation.)
Note by : Please refer to Randine’s book, The Infertility
Cure, for exercises which redirect the circulation to the ovaries.
At our clinics we teach our patients this technique and refer women
to yoga for fertility.
3 Hormonal balance – the endocrine system is a delicate interplay
of the reproductive hormones, stress hormones, and emotions, in
symphony with each other. This system operates via feedback, which
means that anytime you introduce an outside hormone into its influence,
it shuts that system down. Synthetic hormones can’t cure hormonal
imbalances, they can only override them. The endocrine system is
the most sensitive bodily system which requires the perfect balancing
act of multiple factors, inside and out. Like all other mammals,
our bodies do not want us pregnant when our endocrine systems are
stressed.
Note by : At our clinic we use both a Hair Analyis and Salvia Test
to tell use precisely what is occurring within a woman’s body
with her endocrine and hormonal systems, which are so closely linked.
These test give us answers to those who come in with “unexplained
infertility” and we can then specifically address each woman’s
needs. With acupuncture and the appropriate nutritional and herbal
supplements, the reproductive system is supported to operate efficiently,
while reducing the internal stress response. When we abide by nature’s
own directives, an internal order awakens inside, and automatically
knows the rules.
We encourage our patients to pay attention to these three factors,
our reproductive systems respond beautifully, as if this is what
they were waiting for all along.
Christine, age 33, was given the diagnosis of premature ovarian
failure when her FSH was found to be marginally elevated. Her doctor
put her on three cycles of clomid, an anti-estrogen drug which raises
FSH, and her body did all it could to save her – her reproductive
system completely shut down in response to the clomid (don’t
ever take clomid if your FSH is elevated, even borderline). She
quit menstruating, her FSH rose ever higher, and she was left with
two options –
donor egg or adoption.
Christine didn’t blame her doctor for giving
her the wrong medicine, she did what most all infertility patients
do, quietly suffer alone in agonizing despair. Then she heard about
me and Oriental medicine approach, and something within her said,
“this makes sense.” After one month of natural treatment
of diet, nutritional supplementation, ovarian exercises, acupuncture
and herbs, her period returned. Christine went back to her infertility
specialist and asked her if there was any hope for her. Her doctor
told her if she conceived on her own, she would “eat her shoe.”
During one of our appointments, Christine looked me in the eye with
severe intensity and begged, “Do you think there might be
hope?” I looked back with the same intensity in my gaze, said,
“Yes, Christine. There is hope.” She believed me. More
importantly, she believed in herself, and her body’s ability
to heal herself. She had one more period. That is, until she conceived,
naturally, with their first miracle child. And, as far as I know,
no shoes were ingested.
Note by Claudia B Wolfe: At Wellness Within, we have many of these
stories as well. One of our special ones is a woman, Janet, 36,
who had 5 miscarriages and numerous IUI’s without success.
Her periods were highly irregular, between 34 and 60 days. She changed
her diet, took all the supplements and came regularly for her acupuncture
treatments. I told her to forget about having a baby for a while
and let her body return to it’s natural balance. Well, after
6 months, her periods never did normalize and finally, I said, just
pay attention to when you get the mid-cycle mucous. When she saw
that, then do the ‘Baby-Dance” and let’s see what
happens. This was highly irregular not to have a woman’s cycle
to regulate, but this woman had a history of miscarriages, so I
knew she was ovulating somewhere in this erratic menstrual history.
We had done all the Pre-conception Care work for 6 months and I
thought, if she can get pregnant again, she should be ready to carry
to term. Sure enough, she conceived in the seventh month of working
with us and since then came back for a second baby, which she conceived
within 5 months of working with us. Her periods eventually because
somewhat more regular, but at this point, she’s a very busy
mom.
Listen to your own internal wisdom. Do you want a child, any child,
at all costs, or can you allow yourself the gift of reclaiming your
reproductive, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health?
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