Fertility and Acupuncture: The affects of caffeine on conceiving.

Let’s take a step back – several years ago a large research study followed nurses focusing on their consumption of caffeine and if they had problems conceiving. There appeared a link between increased caffeine consumption and longer time periods until conception. Nurses who consumed 2 caffeinated drinks daily took longer to conceive than the nurses who drank 1 caffeine beverage. Nurses who drank 3 caffeinated beverages had extended periods of infertility compared to nurses drinking 2 caffeinated drinks per day. Yet, researchers had a limited understanding of how caffeine affected fertility.

A study released January 2011 (Inhibitory effect of caffeine on pacemaker activity in the oviduct is mediated by cAMP-regulated conductances. Dixon, SJ Hwang, FC Britton, KM Sanders and SM WardDepartment of Physiology and Cell Biology, University of Nevada School of Medicine, Reno, NV, USA) found the pacemaker effect of the follapian tubes were impaired by caffeine.

So what does a pacemaker have to do with ovaries? The study is not referring to pacemaker for the heart, but to the very important pulsating waves that carry an egg down the tubes to meet with a potential sperm. Yes, the reproductive system is incredibly smart and employs microscopic waves via the fimbria. What are the fimbria? They are the fingers at the end of the tube close to the ovary. The fingers’ job is to wave in a “come here” motion (imagine using your finger to get your pet to come to you) at the corresponding time the egg leaves the ovary. The waving of the fingers pulls the egg into the follapian tube and pulsating motion in the tube continues to carry it (which the body to hoping will be an embryo) into the uterus. It’s an amazing dance between the ovary, follapian tubes, and uterus – a very delicate and yet powerful synchronization for a tiny system.

Nixon’s study found caffeine inhibits the cells responsible for production of the waves/pulsation in the tubes and greatly slows down the dance between the ovary, follapian tubes and uterus. Potentially the egg will end up lingering around, stuck waiting for the motion to whisk it into and down the tube.

The second study from NIH (Study Shows Caffeine Consumption Linked to Estrogen Changes) found estrogen levels fluctuating in women who consumed 200mg of caffeine a day. Asian women were found to have elevated estrogen levels; white women had lower estrogen levels, while black women had no change.

Proper follicular growth is dependent upon estrogen – too high or too low and estrogen may impact egg quality. When estrogen is high/low, it can impact other issues, like endometriosis or bone mass. In fact high estrogen can emphasize PMS symptoms by increasing breast tenderness, bloating and irritability.

Though the first research article utilized only cells to study caffeine and the second one had a small sample size – there appears to be a clear link between caffeine, hormones and physical interplay.

Yes, the research isn’t perfect; the question of who is affected by caffeine has not been clearly defined. Yet removing caffeine is a quick and easy change that might change your reproductive health.

Next blog posting: How does Chinese Medicine view caffeine consumption?

Acupuncture can help high FSH

The below study had found FSH levels are not the best indicator of fertility and FSH levels need to be revaluated for diagnostic purposes. In fact the study found some women had high FSH and conceived without any problems.
If you receive the high FSH diagnosis, please don’t panic. For women with high FSH and problems conceiving, they might need to focus on hormonal balancing and lifestyle factors. It’s not the end and hope is still present.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101026153359.htm
Study Raises Concern About Ability of Tests to Predict Fertility
ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2010) — The method used to assess infertility in at-home tests might not be the best for identifying which women will have trouble getting pregnant, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

The study found that the cutoffs used by such infertility tests, which measure levels of a molecule called follicle stimulating hormone or FSH, label many women as infertile who actually go on to have children naturally.

It also suggests that another hormone, called antimullerian hormone or AMH, could prove to be a much better harbinger of infertility.

“That is not to say that these tests are useless, but they certainly warrant further investigation,” said lead study author Anne Z. Steiner, MD, MPH, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UNC. “Our findings may mean that we need to go back to the drawing board and change the potential cutoff for infertility in the current tests, or perhaps we need to explore other tests altogether.”

Steiner presented her research on Oct. 26, 2010 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Denver, Colorado. Steiner is also a member of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute, the academic home of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) at UNC.

Many women have been waiting until later in life to start a family, driving up the demand for a simple pee stick or blood draw that can predict how many reproductive years they have left. Since a major cause of reproductive aging is the aging of the ovary, most of the focus has been on looking at markers of ovarian aging — such as FSH or AMH — as a potential fertility test.

Levels of FSH have been proven to predict the timing of menopause and the probability of conceiving following assisted reproductive technology, but it is not clear if they can also predict natural fertility (or infertility) in the general population.

Through the pilot phase of a project called Time to Conceive, Steiner and her colleagues looked at 100 women who were at risk of reproductive aging, defined as being between the ages of 30 and 45. As soon as these women came off birth control, the researchers began to measure levels of the hormones estrogen, FSH, and AMH. They then used statistical modeling to adjust for intercourse patterns and see if the hormone levels correlated with how long it took to get pregnant. The premise was relatively simple: people who take longer to get pregnant are less fertile than people who get pregnant very quickly.

In recreating the conditions used in the current fertility tests, they found that a quarter of the women had abnormal FSH levels and would be deemed infertile. But when the researchers followed these women for six months, they found that they did not have more difficulty getting pregnant than the others in the study. However, when they raised the threshold of these tests to a higher value of the hormone, they did find an association with infertility.

“So it may be that this test can pinpoint infertility, but we need to uniquely define where that cutoff is going to be,” said Steiner.

The researchers also found that AMH, FSH’s sister hormone, was vastly superior at predicting fertility. Unfortunately, AMH can only be measured in the blood and not the urine, and even the blood test has not been approved for clinical use. But Steiner says with further study the use of this other hormone may provide a more accurate infertility test.

Steiner continues to enroll women in the Time to Conceive study, which will eventually follow a total of 750 women for up to twelve months.

“Hopefully we can find a better way of predicting infertility so we can provide women with more reproductive control,” said Steiner.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Study co-authors include Amy H. Herring, PhD and Steven Hoberman, MPH, UNC; Frank Z. Stanczyk, PhD, University of Southern California; and Donna D. Baird, PhD, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Fertility and ovulation

Unfortunately, the majority of dairy products on the market come from mass production dairy farms, which force feed cows corn and rely on hormones/antibiotics to meet quotas (if you want to understand the health complications, politics or morality of mass production food, watch the movie Food, Inc.). This is the primary source of our dairy products and potentially it may not contain the healthy fats compared to grass fed cows. Cows evolved to eat a diet based on grass, not corn. It appears a grass fed diet enhances the good fats in milk. According to the research, a grass fed diet influences the concentration of good fats in whole milk and thus improves heart health. Is it possible that whole milk from grass feed cows is an opportunity to enhance fertility and not produce phlegm? Maybe future research?

Is milk from grass-fed cows more heart-healthy?
If milk does the heart good, it might do the heart better if it comes from dairy cows grazed on grass instead of on feedlots, according to a new study.

Earlier experiments have shown that cows on a diet of fresh grass produce milk with five times as much of an unsaturated fat called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) than do cows fed processed grains. Studies in animals have suggested that CLAs can protect the heart, and help in weight loss. Hannia Campos of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and her colleagues found, in a study of 4,000 people, that people with the highest concentrations of CLAs — the top fifth among all participants — had a 36 percent lower risk of heart attack compared to those with the lowest concentrations.
Those findings held true even once the researchers took into account heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking.

The new findings suggest that CLA offers heart-healthy benefits that could more than offset the harms of saturated fat in milk, Campos said. “Because pasture grazing leads to higher CLA in milk, and it is the natural feed for cattle, it seems like more emphasis should be given to this type of feeding,” she told Reuters Health by email. Dairy products in the U.S. come almost exclusively from feedlots, she added. And cow’s milk is the primary source of CLA. (Beef contains a small amount.)
Campos and her colleagues looked to Costa Rica for their study, where pasture grazing of dairy cows is still the norm. They identified nearly 2,000 Costa Ricans who had suffered a non-fatal heart attack, and another 2,000 who had not. Then they measured the amount of CLA in fat tissues to estimate each person’s intake.

Since CLA typically travels with a host of other fats, the researchers went a step further to tease apart its effects from those of its predominantly unhealthful companions, they report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The difference in risk attributed to CLA subsequently rose to 49 percent.

“Whole-fat milk and dairy products have gotten such a bad reputation in recent years due to their saturated fat and cholesterol contents, and now we find that CLA may be incredibly health-promoting,” Michelle McGuire, spokesperson for the journal’s publisher, the American Society for Nutrition, and associate professor at Washington State University, told Reuters Health in an email. “Whole milk is not the villain!”

Each year, approximately 1.5 million Americans will suffer a heart attack. A third will not survive.
The evidence may now be piling up: another paper out of Sweden in the same issue of the journal as the Costa Rican study also hints at heart attack protection through milk fat.

Further, the benefits of CLA may extend beyond the heart to the prevention of cancer and diabetes, suggests McGuire, pointing to results of other animal studies. “Milk is actually the only food ever ‘designed by nature’ to be fed to mammals,” she added. “We need to look to milk as the perfect food and learn everything we can from it.”

SOURCE: here American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online May 12, 2010.

Infertility and Sadness

Pregnancy is often fraught with complications, not least for women suffering from depression while carrying a child: new research suggests that women who take antidepressant medications during pregnancy may have an increased risk of miscarriage.

Scientists at the University of Montreal reported Monday, May 31, in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that women taking the drugs most often prescribed to treat depression and anxiety — including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and the older tricyclics — had a significantly higher risk of miscarriage than a matched control group of women who did not take antidepressants. The study is the first of its kind to analyze which antidepressants and which doses are most likely to be associated with spontaneous abortion. Led by Anick Bérard at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Montreal, the research team also documented that two SSRIs, paroxetine (Paxil) and venlafaxine (Effexor), are associated with the greatest risk.

Bérard analyzed data from a pregnancy registry she established in Quebec that collects records on births and spontaneous abortions occurring in hospitals in the Canadian province. The study included 69,742 women from the registry, 5,124 of whom had had a clinically recorded miscarriage. Among the women who had miscarried, 5.5% had filled at least one prescription for an antidepressant during pregnancy, compared with 2.7% of the control group. Researchers calculated that antidepressant users had a 68% higher risk of miscarriage than nonusers, after controlling for other influences that could potentially confound the association.

Overall, the risk was greatest among women who combined the use of two or more classes of antidepressants. When researchers looked at the small amounts of data on patients using specific drugs, they found that those taking paroxetine alone had a 75% higher rate of miscarriage than women without depression, while women taking venlafaxine had a more than doubled risk. “To my knowledge, we are the only ones to go further and look at which class [of antidepressant] and which dosage increased the risk most,” says Bérard.

However, the study was an observational one that looked retrospectively at data already collected, which means that it’s possible that some part of the miscarriage risk picked up by Bérard can be ascribed to depression itself rather than the drugs used to treat it. Indeed, the authors acknowledge that some past research has shown that women who are depressed during pregnancy are at increased risk of spontaneous abortion. But while acknowledging that limitation of the current study, Bérard stresses that it’s unlikely that such a large difference — the 68% increase — could be wholly attributable to underlying causes. “The effect is too big,” she says, “and while it may explain a small portion, it wouldn’t explain the totality of the effect.”

Still, obstetricians are not ready to stop writing prescriptions for antidepressants. Taken together, research on the risks of using antidepressants — and most other prescription drugs — for expectant moms and their developing babies is limited and often inconsistent. Evidence for the risks associated with depression drugs has been increasing in recent years, however, with studies finding a link between the medications, particularly when used during the first trimester, and as much as a sixfold increase in lung, heart and other congenital birth defects in newborns. Bérard’s study adds solid evidence for a new risk factor, but because it is an observational study, says Dr. Alex Vidaeff, director of research in the division of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, “with this level of evidence, immediate changes in practice may be ill-advised.”

Such findings leave women with depression facing increasingly complicated treatment decisions when they are pregnant or considering starting a family. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), depression during pregnancy is common: about 14% to 23% of pregnant women will experience depressive symptoms; in 2003, about 13% of women took an antidepressant at some point during pregnancy. But both antenatal depression and the use of antidepressant medications are associated with health risks to the newborn. Past studies have shown that pregnant women who are depressed are more likely to have premature births and low-birth-weight babies and that their infants are at increased risk of irritability, sleep problems and high blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol compared with babies born to mothers without depression.

As with many clinical decisions, depression treatment during pregnancy is a matter of balance. Experts advise women to discuss with their physician the severity of their depression or anxiety and weigh their past history of miscarriage before deciding whether to change medications or reduce their doses while carrying a child. For its part, the ACOG recommended in a 2009 report that women with severe depression stay on medication during pregnancy and that women who are psychiatrically stable may also be able to continue medication after consulting with their mental-health-care provider and obstetrician. Depressed women who are not taking antidepressants or are not helped by them should seek treatment, whether it is psychotherapy or other interventions that can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Although Bérard’s analysis did not include a side-by-side comparison of antidepressant use in alleviating women’s depressive or anxiety symptoms, other research has documented the importance of maintaining such treatment for women who otherwise would struggle to function at their best, much less under the added stress of expecting a child.

Read more http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1992988,00.html#ixzz0sB0tp0Bl

Removing milk for improved fertility.

What is phlegm/damp? Chinese medicine observes how energy flows and issues that block it. One of the major energy blockers is damp/phlegm which hinders moving/circulating energy in the body. A visual description of phlegm/damp: the gooey greasy blockage in the drain for a kitchen sink. The blockage stops water from making its way down the pipe and allows greasy dirty water to collect in the sink. It is important for dirty water to move out of the sink and provide space for clean water to accumulate. As in the example it’s important for fluids in the body to circulate correctly to be healthy. If you have a yeast infection, your body is seeking a way to remove the infection (via discharge) and return to a healthy environment. If the yeast is allowed to grow, the infection becomes itchy and smelly turning the vaginal area into a hostile environment. Other common physical examples of damp/phlegm are sinusitis, phlegmy coughs, vaginal discharge, breast cysts, ovarian cysts, fibroids and polyps. This sampling would indicate the removal of dairy products.

From a modern perspective, certain enzymes in the milk cause mucosal membranes to produce phlegm in some individuals. Certain cow breeds produce a milk enzyme called beta-CM-7 which can trigger mucosal membranes in the digestive track and lungs to produce phlegm. Thus you might notice after eating cheese or drinking milk, phlegm in your throat or the need to spit out phlegm. The phlegmy reaction results in inflammation – constricting blood flow to cells – stopping the body from proper cellular function.

As most people have experienced sinus headaches, the pressure and pain from inflammation is intense. Yet, many times the inflammation in tissues is not noticed and this subtle phlegmy inflammation can cause imbalances. In the example of mild vaginal discharge, there is no itching, swelling or order, but mild inflammation causes cellular swelling and decreased blood flow. Thus chronic discharge could result in a uterine environment that discourages implantation. A good visual picture – if you were a little embryo would you want to make a home in a greasy slick slimy swollen lining? Probable not.

This small change (removal of dairy) can make a big impact. Many clients notice after several weeks off dairy products that they have less cloudy thoughts, stop having a feeling of phlegm in their throats and less bloating. A great substitute is goats milk (does not contain the same enzymes as dairy) almond or rice milk. If you love milk this change can be made for the time you are trying to conceive and once your baby is here you can drink milk again.

Most Young Women with Menopause-like Condition Retain Store of Eggs
Discovery May Lead to Treatments to Restore Fertility

Contrary to what researchers had previously believed, most young women and girls who experience a menopause-like condition called primary ovarian insufficiency still have immature eggs in their ovaries, according to a study by scientists at the National Institutes of Health.

Primary ovarian insufficiency, or POI, results in a menopause-like condition years before normal menopause begins—sometimes as early as the teens and twenties. Women with primary ovarian insufficiency stop producing normal amounts of reproductive hormones, develop hot flashes, and typically become infertile.

“The discovery that most women with primary ovarian insufficiency have immature eggs remaining in their ovaries raises the possibility of developing treatments for the infertility that accompanies the condition,” said Alan E. Guttmacher, M.D., acting director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NIH institute at which the study was conducted.

The findings were published online in Fertility and Sterility. The study’s senior author was Lawrence M. Nelson, M.D., head of NICHD’s Integrative Reproductive Medicine Group.

POI occurs in 1 out of 100 women by age 40. In addition to experiencing hot flashes, women with POI cease having regular menstrual periods. The symptoms may be lessened or relieved by therapy to replace the missing hormones. Although most women with POI are infertile, Dr. Nelson said, about 5 to 10 percent become pregnant unexpectedly at some time after their condition is diagnosed.

The findings expand on earlier research showing that ovulation is possible in this group of patients. Refinement in ultrasound technology allowed the researchers to detect ovarian follicles in three quarters of the POI patients who took part in the study.

For the current study, Dr. Nelson and his colleagues used ultrasound to assess follicle maturation in a group of women with POI. A follicle is a fluid-filled sac in the ovary that gives rise to the egg cell. The researchers compared 97 women who had POI with 42 women with normal menstrual cycles. When the scientists performed ultrasound examinations on the women with POI, they were surprised to discover that 73 percent of the women had ovarian follicles. Moreover, these follicles were capable of producing ovarian hormones.

Dr. Nelson explained that during a normal menstrual cycle, the pituitary gland releases follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), which causes follicles to grow. While they are growing, follicles release the hormone estradiol, a form of estrogen. The pituitary also produces another hormone, called luteinizing hormone (LH), which remains at low levels during most of the cycle and then surges when it is time to ovulate. This LH surge gives the follicle a signal to break open and release the egg.

The scientists found that in women with primary ovarian insufficiency, both FSH and LH levels are higher than in women without the condition.

“The high LH levels indicate that the pituitary is continually sending the ovaries the message to ovulate.” Dr. Nelson said. “The follicles get the message to mature before they are ready, and so they don’t grow normally, and in most cases, fail to release the egg.”

In women of reproductive age who do not have POI, the ovary produces what Dr. Nelson refers to as a support group of extra follicles. These extra follicles develop along with the dominant follicle—the one that eventually releases the egg. Dr. Nelson theorizes that the extra follicles produce estradiol and other hormones to provide negative feedback to the pituitary. The hormones from the support group follicles regulate the pituitary, keeping FSH and LH blood levels in the normal range. In an earlier study, Dr. Nelson and his colleagues found that most women with POI do not have the follicle support group.

Without the support group, Dr. Nelson said, the solitary dominant follicle fails to mature properly due to the high LH levels. The patients develop what Dr. Nelson refers to as lonely luteinized follicles.
In the current study, women with primary ovarian insufficiency had lower levels of estradiol than women with normal menstrual cycles. But the women’s follicles were producing some estradiol, the scientists found, and they had higher levels of estradiol than did women who had no detectable follicles. They also had higher levels of progesterone, a hormone that follicles produce in response to LH.

“These follicles aren’t inert structures,” Dr. Nelson said. “They are producing reproductive hormones—just not enough.”

Women with primary ovarian insufficiency are usually treated with a patch that releases estradiol to alleviate their menopause-like symptoms. In a few instances, participants in Dr. Nelson’s studies at NIH have become pregnant during their treatment with the estradiol patch. Dr. Nelson hypothesizes that the estradiol supplied by the patch allowed their follicles to mature by suppressing LH levels into the normal range. He is planning a study to determine if, in addition to relieving their menopause like symptoms, the replacement estradiol supplied by the patch will also improve their chances of ovulation.

“The body needs estradiol both to prepare the lining of the uterus to support pregnancy and also to regulate FSH and LH levels in a feedback loop,” Dr. Nelson said. “We hope to test whether giving estradiol via a skin patch to women with primary ovarian insufficiency will tamp down their LH level, allow the follicles to mature at an appropriate time, and help women with this condition to ovulate.”

Dr. Nelson thinks that the one-quarter of the women in his study who did not have follicles that could be detected by ultrasound may simply have been observed at a time when the follicles were not growing. If the women were examined on another occasion, follicles may have been visible, he said. With POI, ovarian functioning appears to be intermittent and unpredictable. So the fact that the researchers were unable to detect follicles in some of the women during the study doesn’t preclude that on another occasion the women would develop follicles large enough to be detected by ultrasound.

In previous research, Dr. Nelson and his coworkers reported that women who experience a delay in diagnosing POI have an increased risk of low bone density.

“It’s really important for women with POI to get a diagnosis as soon as possible so they can begin treatment,” he said. “Lack of reproductive hormones may result in bone thinning and, possibly, bone fractures, later in life.”

Other authors of the study were Ziad R. Hubayter, Vaishali Popat, Vien H. Vanderhoof, Obioma Ndubizu, and James F. Troendle, also of NICHD; and Diane Johnson, Edie Mao, and Karim A. Calis, of NIH’s Clinical Center.

The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute’s Web site:

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/apr2010/nichd-26.htm

“What if I redefine what it means to be a mother?”

“What if I redefine what it means to be a family?”

“What if I let go of the doubt, the worry, the fear or self judgment for one day…one week…the rest of my life?”

“What if I become an advocate for infertility research and treatment?”

“What if I lived in the moment rather than living in an uncertain future?”

“What if my story could help one person?”

These profound questions touch every couple on the fertility journey. Unfortunately most couples feel alone in this journey, as it is kept a secret. I ask – why should infertility be the hidden secret? There is nothing shameful in this journey and if more couples spoke up uneducated people (usually the one who had no problems conceiving) could see infertility as a disease. First, by speaking up you could help a couple struggling with fertility issues. Secondly, fertility treatments should be covered by insurance and this will only happen if couples demand change. Thirdly, with speaking up it allows society to grow and redefine what is a family/mother/father. We are the people with the power to change the fabric of society and reweave it for the better.

http://www.beautifulcervix.com/welcome/

Check out the high protein and fiber - that will balance out the sugars and carbs.

Well one of the things I miss on the gluten free diet, is eating granola. All that delicious granola sold at grocery stores is out of bounds. Recently I came across Go Raw Grow Live Granola.

Go Raw Granola comes in different flavors – plain (white packaging), slightly sweeter (red packaging) and chocolate (brown packaging). I have enjoyed the slightly sweet and chocolate flavors. The plain package is too plain and tastes like cardboard. The granola is tasty, crunchy and sweet. I’m posting the nutritional facts from the revise of the package. Though this product is very high in carbohydrates, it is also very high in protein and fiber, two components that slow absorption and control blood sugar levels. No additional sugars are added to the product and the sweetness comes from the fruit and spouts. A small bowl of this product is filling and gives you energy that lasts. If you have diabetes or PCOS you will want to avoid this product due to the high carbohydrate level. Most common granolas do not contain fiber or high levels of protein, thus you will experience the sugar rush and still feel unsatisfied later. Thus is product is useful for individuals looking to fuel up in the morning with a healthier alternative.

One disadvantage to the Go Raw Live Granola is the price – about $12 to $14 for one package. Yet a bowl of this product is a great breakfast meal or afternoon snack.

What are signs of gluten sensitivity? Well some very common symptoms can be caused by gluten, such as: bloating, constipation/diarrhea, fogginess and sleepiness after eating, abdominal cramping, skin rashes and many more. I believe the best rule of thumb is trying out the 80/20 gluten free rule. That means eating 80% of your diet from gluten free products, fresh fruits/veggies and protein. The other 20% coming from gluten products when the situation does not provide the flexibility, such as eating out or eliminating that last favorite product. If after a month you feel increased energy, less bloating, consistent bowl movements and stable blood sugars, more than likely you might be sensitive to gluten. At this point you might want to try a complete gluten free diet and see if your health improves. Generally most of my clients feel a hundred times better on the 80/20 gluten rule.

How does gluten potential effect fertility? When the gluten sensitive body digests food containing gluten three common components happen:

1) Gluten molecules stick to the gut lining causing inflammation.

2) Inflammation/destruction of the gut lining causing mal absorption of basic nutrients, such as Vit D, B and iron resulting malnutrition.

3) Inflammation of the gut activates the immune system. Over activation of immune systems causes miss signaling and autoimmune disorders. I often wonder could POF or the poor responder be caused at some level by antibodies attacking the ovaries or reproductive hormones. I have yet to find information supporting this idea, but researchers are only starting to understand the power of the immune system.
The above items can lead to imbalances in the body, thus infertility.

What does it mean to go gluten free? lNothing fancy here, just simple little modifications can make a big difference. As time passes I will post more information about this topic.

What’s the hardest part of the gluten free diet? I found substituting gluten products in my kitchen’s pantry to be the hardest. Even my clients feel overwhelmed by this, since gluten is in almost everything. With time I have learned a lot (and still learning) but I want to pass this knowledge on. I will post the products I am buying and give mini reviews as a tool for my clients and women reading this blog to integrate these small changes for improved well being (and of course improved fertility).

Almost three months later, I have not looked back and don’t miss the gluten products I gave up. Developing new habits and dealing with uneducated friend’s weird comments at restaurants has been difficult. Yet the power of this simple step is never ending, treating your body with respect, recognizing its need for support and making the steps to heal it.