The many stories circulating about fertility problems and treatments may give you the impression that the incidence of infertility is rising.

On the other hand, a 2002 CDC report says that infertility has actually declined substantially in the past twenty years, though that report has been disputed.

If you’re confused about fertility, it’s probably because you’ve been paying attention—the messages out there are mighty mixed.

Though the use of fertility treatments is rising, there’s no evidence that the intrinsic span of women’s fertile years has changed much over time.

While advancing treatment options can expand the span for some, the blockage of fallopian tubes brought on by pelvic inflammatory disease or endometriosis can impair it for others. Then there’s the male infertility element.

So if women aren’t more infertile now than in the past, why are the numbers of visits to fertility doctors rising?

Read rest of article

---

TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:

Ready: Why Women Are Embracing The New Later Motherhood
by Elizabeth Gregory

-- Over the past three decades, skyrocketing numbers of women have chosen to start their families in their late thirties and early forties.

In 2005, ten times as many women had their first child between the ages of 35 and 39 as in 1975, and thirteen times as many had their first between 40 and 44.

Women now have the option to define for themselves when they're ready for family, rather than sticking to a schedule set by social convention.

As a society, however, we have yet to come to terms with the phenomenon of later motherhood, and women who decide it makes sense for them to delay pregnancy often find themselves confronted with alarmist warnings about the dangers of waiting too long.

In Ready, Elizabeth Gregory tracks the burgeoning trend of new later motherhood and demonstrates that for many women today, waiting for family works best.

She provides compelling evidence of the benefits of having children later -- by birth or by adoption.

Paperback: 336 pages
Click to order/for more info: Ready - US | CDN | UK

Start reading Ready on your Kindle in under a minute!

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

---

Pelvic inflammatory disease is a painful condition affecting women. It occurs when the internal reproductive organs - the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries - become infected, often by a sexually-transmitted disease.

On top of short-term discomfort, the long-term effects can be chronic pain and even infertility. Here's what you need to know to try to avoid it...

Read more...



Recent Keyword Searches: is it safe for woman over the age of 42 to have children, change of life pregnancy, getting pregnant in your forties, how much cost to get pregnant, dhea supplementation to improve reproductive success

Picture by red2000
If you're having trouble becoming pregnant and have had one or more abortions in the past, you might be worrying if the two are related. Infertility can be related to abortion in two ways. First, when you have an abortion, your cervix is dilated. If you've had multiple abortions, the cervix often dilates more readily, sometimes prematurely. Doctors call this an 'incompetent cervix.'

Photo by lusi
Dr. Wojo: During nearly every emergency department shift, I deal with genitourinary problems and pregnancy complications. Usually, common infections are found. But sometimes, less common infections -- such as bacterial mycoplasma and ureaplasma infections -- are diagnosed.

What are these infections? Mycoplasmas are some of the smallest living organisms that, unlike most bacteria, do not have cell walls; instead, they live within other live cells. A close relative is ureaplasma. Both of these organisms can be found in up to 70 percent of sexually active adults. But when there is significant overgrowth, problems can occur, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, urethritis and pregnancy loss.

Read more: http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090420/WDH04/904200318



Recent Keyword Searches: pcod more causes_risk_factors, can i get pregnant at 48, does your can you get pregnant at 40, can a forty five year old woman conceive?, conception age 43

Eating the right foods can counter ovulatory infertility.

Approximately 10 million couples have sought help for infertility, and delays in conception are common today. A number of factors ranging from endometriosis and pelvic inflammatory disease in women to medication and drug use in males contribute to infertility. In addition to fertility testing, healthy diet and lifestyle can increase your chances of success.

Read more: http://www.tasteforlife.com/content/default.asp?artid=2163&title=Foods_for_Fertility

These lines of evidence suggest that high levels of blood sugar-disruptive carbohydrates in the diet might be bad news for female fertility.

The extent to which a food raises blood sugar can be measured and is expressed as its glycemic index (GI). However, the extent to which a food disrupts blood sugar and insulin will depend not just on its GI, but how much we eat of it. One way to get an idea of the overall effect of a food is to take its GI and multiply it by the amount of carbohydrate found in a standard portion of food. Divide this by 100 and we have a measurement known as the glycemic load (GL).

Read more: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/15212/

Before you consult an infertility specialist to enable you to wind up pregnant, inquire as to whether you ought to be offered antibiotics to treat a group of germs called mycoplasma.

A report from Germany (1) affirms numerous different studies (2,3,4) demonstrating the most widely recognized reason for infertility is a uterine infection. Of ladies being assessed for barrenness, 40% between the ages of 26 and 35 had chlamydia or other mycoplasma, as were 36% of those with a past history of a uterine infection, and half of those with tubal blockage. In another study, over 60% had a past disease. (5)

These infections cause both male and female barrenness. The uterus is shaped like a bull's head with two horns. The ovaries are situated outside of the uterus at the tip of each horn. An egg starts in the fallopian tube into the horn and after that into the body of the uterus itself. Little hairs called cilia clear the egg down the tubes into the body of the uterus. A past mycoplasma infection can harm the cilia (4) so the egg stays in the horn or an infection can obstruct the tubes so the egg can't reach the body of the uterus.

Mycoplasma can cause male barrenness by harming sperm so they can't swim toward the egg and fertilize it. People can be tainted with mycoplasma, despite the fact every accessible test can't find it (5,6) and they may have no symptoms. They may have burning when peeing, distress when the bladder is full, or a strong need to void. Ladies may have just spotting between periods. (7)

Treatment with the more up to date erythromycins, clarithromycin, and azithromycin, can fix mycoplasma infections and help numerous ladies to get pregnant before they burn through  thousands of dollars on infertility evaluations.

Note: Azithromycin is generally known as a Z-pack and is a 5-day course of antibiotics.

---

TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Pregnancy Miracle
by Lisa Olsen

-- A 279-page, instantly downloadable e-book presenting a 5-step, sure-fire, 100% guaranteed, clinically proven holistic and ancient Chinese system for permanently reversing your infertility and your partner's infertility disorders and getting pregnant quickly, naturally and safely within 2-4 months without drugs, dangerous surgeries, side effects, or expensive infertility treatments.

It's probably the most powerful infertility reversal system ever developed, and currently the best-selling e-book of its kind on the entire Web!

Here's what the author Lisa Olson had to say about her incredible program:
After 14 years of trial, error, and experimentation, I finally discovered the answer to infertility and developed a fool-proof system to getting pregnant the natural way - no drugs, or surgery necessary.

It took a lot of research to get to where I am today, to know exactly what works and what doesn't. Yes, after desperate trial and error, countless of useless treatments, disappointments, and agony, a simple holistic system opened the door to my new and much brighter life of motherhood.

I was also excited to see that my other infertility related symptoms had diminished. After years of waiting, I was finally free from Infertility! I have become a proud mother of two.

And now I'm finally revealing my secrets in this new 'encyclopedia' of pregnancy called, Pregnancy Miracle.

I will be your own personal coach, take you by the hand, and lead you through the lousy advice, hype and gimmicks... and directly to the sort of inner balance perfection that will end your battle with infertility forever and help you become a proud mother of your healthy children.


Click to order/for more info on this helpful program:
Pregnancy Miracle

Chlamydia, the sexually transmitted infection (STI) carried by one in ten sexually-active young British adults can make men infertile by damaging the quality of their sperm, new research has shown.

While the condition, which usually passes undetected, has long been known to threaten female fertility, scientists from Spain and Mexico have now established that it presents similar risks for men.

Men with chlamydia have three times the normal number of sperm with genetic damage that can impair their ability to father children, the study found.

Antibiotic treatment can reverse the effect, and preliminary results indicate that it may dramatically enhance pregnancy rates when couples are trying for a baby. But the discovery suggests that the prevalence of the disease may be contributing to infertility across an entire generation of young adults.

Britain’s national screening programme has found that 10.2 per cent of both men and women aged 18 to 25 carry the bacteria, and studies have found infection rates as high as 5 per cent among older groups with a lower risk.

The findings indicate that untreated chlamydia infections should not just concern women, who have long been warned that the condition can make them infertile, but has direct consequences for men.

This will create fresh pressure for chlamydia screening to be more effectively targeted at young men, who rarely seek testing and treatment unless they develop symptoms, which are often absent or quickly fade.

Doctors have already warned that the rise in the number of chlamydia cases in Britain may rob thousands of young women of the chance to have children. Figures from the Health Protection Agency reveal that cases of chlamydia have increased by more than 200 per cent in England in the past decade.

Chlamydia is easily treated with antibiotics, typically a week’s course of doxycycline or a single dose of azithromycin, but testing is necessary first.

Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield and secretary of the British Fertility Society, said that the emerging understanding of how chlamydia affects male fertility should change the way that society approaches the condition.

“We might think of chlamydia as a disease that damages female fertility, but we need to think again,” he said. “It does damage female fertility, but it appears to damage male fertility, too.

“Previously, it was thought that the most worrying thing about chlamydia infections in men was as a conduit for the infection of women. The thing that drives most men to sexual health clinics is symptoms, and chlamydia is often symptom-free. Chlamydia is getting out of control. We have got to encourage men as well as women to go for screening.”

In the study, a team led by José Luis Fernández, of the Juan Cana-lejo University Hospital in La Coruña, examined sperm samples taken from 193 men seeking fertility treatment with their partners in Monterey, Mexico.

Of these, 143 were infected with both chlamydia and mycoplasma, another common sexually transmitted bacterium, while 50 were uninfected and served as healthy controls.

Dr Fernández, who will present his findings today at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in Washington, then examined the men’s sperm for a form of genetic damage called DNA fragmentation. This can cause sperm to die, as well as hindering their ability to fertilise eggs and embryonic development.

An average of 35 per cent of the infected men’s sperm was damaged, a proportion 3.2 times higher than in the healthy controls.

“We found there was a three-fold increase in the fragmentation of DNA in sperm cells compared with controls, and this could have a potential role in subfertility,” Dr Fernández said.

In the infected group, both partners were treated with antibiotics. During the early stages of treatment, just 12.5 per cent of the couples conceived but, when therapy was complete, 85.7 per cent had achieved a pregnancy.

Successful treatment of the male partners is more likely to have been responsible for this effect.

Chlamydia causes female infertility as a result of chronic infection, which causes damage to the Fallopian tubes, and once this has occurred it is not usually reversed by treatment.

Men, however, produce new sperm so quickly and in such abundance that removing the infection will rapidly improve sperm quality. After treatment, the infected men produced many fewer genetically damaged sperm.

“After four months of treatment, there was a significant decrease in DNA damage that could improve pregnancy rates in these couples,” Dr Fernández said. “It seems related to an improved pregnancy rate. It’s a very dramatic difference, but this is a small number of couples, so the results are only preliminary.”

The findings suggest that infertility patients of both sexes should be routinely screened for chlamydia, as already happens in most British clinics.

Dr Pacey said: “I would advise couples trying for a baby to be screened for chlamydia. The difficulty is that a positive diagnosis carries implications of infidelity, but of course as it can be asymptomatic the infection could have been there for many years.”

Chlamydia’s effects on female infertility are well-established. If left untreated, up to 40 per cent of women will develop pelvic inflammatory disease, which can cause tubal scarring that leads to infertility and an increased risk of ectopic pregnancy.

In men, chlamydia can lead to swelling of the testicles or epididymis, and either can cause sterility if not treated. However, both conditions are generally treated before they cause long-term damage as they are painful.

Most common sexually transmitted infection

— Chlamydia is caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis

— It is the most common sexually transmitted infection in Britain, with 109,958 confirmed diagnoses in 2005, and the incidence is increasing

— The true figure is thought to be much higher as the condition often has no symptoms, and can pass undetected for years

— Symptoms can include discharge from the vagina or penis or pain on urination, but it often has no symptoms at all

— A study of male Army recruits found that one in ten had chlamydia, but 88 per cent of these had had no symptoms

— Left untreated, it will cause pelvic inflammatory disease in up to 40 per cent of women. This can cause scarring to the Fallopian tubes, leading to infertility or a raised risk of ectopic pregnancy

— In men, it can cause epididymitis or orchitis - swelling of the epididymis at the top of the testicle, or of the testicle itself. This is painful, and can cause scarring and infertility if untreated

— Chlamydia can be detected by a simple urine test; swabs are no longer necessary. Postal kits are available from Boots at £25, and a national free screening programme exists for under-25s

Source: Health Protection Agency, Times database
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2658732.ece