Found on the Soulcysters message board:

My doctor has me taking 200 mg of soy cycle day 1-5 and then 150mg of Clomid cycle day 5-9.

I am taking the soy in the morning and the Clomid in the evening, so that on cycle day 5 I will take 200 mg of soy in the morning and 150mg of Clomid in the evening. I am to start OPK's [ovulation prediction kit] on cycle day 12 at 10am.

When I get a positive, I will go in for an ultrasound to check my lining and my follies, and then I will do an IUI [intra-uterine insemination] at 12 PM the following day, take another OPK [ovulation prediction kit] that day before the IUI, and if it is positive still, then I will get one more IUI done the 24 hours after the first one.

My doctor actually explained it well by saying that the photoestrogens in the soy will be estrogenic and cause my lining to thicken to counteract the Clomid's thinning, it will also give my eggs an estrogenic boost to ripening, so that I will ovulate sooner.

He also said that if we weren't doing an IUI cycle, the soy would be helpful in making a lot of good quality EWCM [egg white cervical mucus].

My doctor did do a small study with 200 women on 100 mg of Clomid - 100 with soy and 100 without. All of the women had to have proven ovulation with Clomid.

Here were his results:

In the women taking Clomid without/with soy:

• average uterine lining thickness : 7.5mm/11.3mm
• average number of mature (20mm or larger) follicles: 2.5/3.5
• average number of released follicles: 2/3
• percent of women that ovulated (verified by ultrasound and progesterone blood testing): 87%/93%
• average day of ovulation: 18/15
• average level of serum progesterone 10 days after ovulation: 9.3/12.2
• percent of ovulating women becoming pregnant with IUI over a course of three cycles (blood hcg levels greater than 5): 43.6%/68.7%
• percent of women that became pregnant that went on to give birth: 52.3%/89.7%

CONTRAINDICATIONS and PRECAUTIONS

Soy isoflavones are contraindicated in those who are hypersensitive to any component of a soy isoflavone-containing product.

Pregnant women and nursing mothers should avoid the use of soy isoflavone supplements pending long-term safety studies. Men with prostate cancer should discuss the advisability of the use of soy isoflavones with their physicians before deciding to use them.

Women with estrogen receptor-positive tumors should exercise caution in the use of soy isoflavones and should only use them if they are recommended and monitored by a physician.

Soy isoflavone intake has been associated with hypothyroidism in some.

NOTE: This post has been created for informational purposes only. This post is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.

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Photo credit: Infertile.com - All Rights Reserved

This article brings up lots of interesting questions!

I wonder if lengthening your dosage of Clomid alone would help some? The only thing is, how long would you lengthen it, if you weren't being monitored? Perhaps to day 10-12? And then I wondered, some are using Soy Isoflavones as if it were Clomid - would it work the same, taking it for an extended time?

Mini-IVF
When patients contemplate IVF, their first reaction is often the fear of daily injections of hormones for months, the incredibly high cost of the drugs, the risk of multiple pregnancy and consequent prematurity, side effects related to high levels of estrogen resulting from large numbers of eggs, hyperstimulation syndrome, and the prospect of painful daily progesterone injections for a full ten weeks even after the IVF procedure.

Mini-IVF is a very unique approach developed by our colleagues in Japan to circumvent these problems and to simplify IVF for patients, reducing the cost while maintaining comparable success rates.

Mini-IVF is designed to recruit only a few (but high quality) eggs, thus avoiding the risks of hyperstimulation, reducing the cost of drugs from an average of $4,000 to closer to $400, reducing the number of injections, and completely avoiding the painful progesterone injections.

This approach is not just a simple-minded reduction in hormonal stimulation. It is an ingeniously conceived and completely different approach to IVF, that saves the patient much of the complexity and cost associated with more conventional IVF protocols. Here is how it works.

On Day 3 of the menstrual cycle, you start on a low dose of Clomid (50mg), but you don’t stop the Clomid in five days as is usually the custom. You just keep taking the Clomid until ultrasound monitoring shows the follicles to be ready for ovulation. A very low booster dose of gonadotropin (just 150 iu of FSH), is added on Days 8, 10, and 12.

Clomid not only stimulates your own pituitary to release FSH naturally (by blocking estrogen’s suppressing effect), but also staying on the Clomid (a unique new approach) blocks estrogen’s stimulation of LH release, and so also usually prevents premature ovulation. Thus, with this simple change in protocol, the old-fashioned, cheap Clomid is able to stimulate the development of great quality eggs for IVF.

Another advantage of this protocol is that you did not have to go on Lupron first to suppress the pituitary. Staying on Clomid blocks estrogen from stimulating your pituitary to release LH, and this prevents premature ovulation without your having to be suppressed.

This means that you can be induced to ovulate with just a simple injection or nasal sniff of Lupron. This causes a more natural LH surge, and avoids the luteal phase defect caused by HCG that would otherwise require months of progesterone injections.

The next step is to recognize that Clomid has a negative effect on the uterine lining (because it prevents estrogen from stimulating the endometrium). That is one reason why results in the past have been so poor with the use of Clomid for ovarian stimulation. The embryos are less likely to implant in such endometrium.

But that problem is solved by using the Japanese protocol for embryo freezing, vitrification, which I discuss elsewhere. We can now freeze the embryos almost with impunity using this approach, with only a 1% risk of loss. Then these embryos are transferred the next month in a natural cycle with no need for taking any hormones at all.

The frozen embryo transfers can then all be performed in a later natural cycle (without hormones). Even if you don't normally ovulate predictably, you can be given one injection of Lupron in the follicular phase (once your follicle reaches 1.5cm) to induce natural luteinization, and still have a natural cycle embryo transfer with no hormones.

The Day 3 frozen embryo would then be transferred five days later, and there is no need for your taking any hormones at all.

Even for poor prognosis cases of older women with low remaining ovarian reserve, there is an advantage to mini-IVF over high dose stimulation. Such patients normally yield very few eggs anyway even with huge megadoses of gonadotropin.

If they have any quality eggs remaining, mini-IVF is just as likely to yield as many eggs (very few, of course) as giving huge megadoses of gonadotropin. Even in the worst case scenario, if there are no good eggs left at all, at least they can discover this with only $400 spent on drugs instead of $7,100 (cost of maximum dosage).

Think of this simple parable: If you are sitting under an apple tree, and wish to eat the most ripe and ready apples, you have a choice. You can chop down the tree, and look at every apple on the fallen tree to see which ones were ready. Or you can simply try to shake the lower branches and eat the one or two that have fallen.

That is the idea of mini-IVF. It may not work for everyone, but for many patients, it will remove much of the aggravation and complexity associated with IVF, and also dramatically reduce the cost.

Source: Infertile.com

A few women said that this was Dr. Zhang's protocol, as well as Dr. Silber

Dr. Zhang and Dr. Silber are affiliated with each other, and also with the Kato Clinic in Japan, where these techniques were developed. The Kato Clinic is the largest IVF center in the world.

Dr Zhang works out of NYC - newhopefertility.com

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Here is what my doctor told me. Most doctors prescribe it 5-9 because that's what comes with the literature for the drug.
Most doctors who have a lot of experience prescribing it choose days 3-7, because it has less effect on the lining.
Clomid reduces cervical mucus and reduces the thickness of your lining.
Taken earlier it gives a chance for estrogen to build up again before ovulation.
My doctor said to take it 3-7 because he's seen too many chemical pregnancies taking it 5-9.   From the Clomid board on FertilityFriend.com

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Each infertile couple is unique, and what suits one couple may not suit another.

Some may be more comfortable first looking into complementary therapies while others will opt for immediate in-vitro fertilization.

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Women who are having difficulty conceiving may want to cut back on their soy consumption after a mouse study reveals that dietary exposure to genistein, a compound found in soy foods, can reduce the odds of a successful pregnancy in multiple ways.

A soy protein, genistein, long known to affect fertility can change how pregnancies start and progress in female mice treated with it as newborns. The changes make it harder for fertilized eggs to implant and grow, possibly contributing to infertility. The effects were observed at levels comparable to those experienced by human infants feeding on soy formula.

Photo by news.bbc.co.uk
A regular diet of even modest amounts of food containing soy may halve sperm concentrations, suggest scientists.

The study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, found 41 million fewer sperm per millilitre of semen after just one portion every two days.

The authors said plant oestrogens in foods such as tofu, soy mince or milk may interfere with hormonal signals.

SEE ALSO
Being too fat 'can damage sperm' 09 Jul 08 Health
Paint chemicals 'may harm sperm' 23 May 08 Health
Coffee 'worsens poor fertility' 07 Jul 08 Health

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
British Fertility Society
Harvard School of Public Health
Human Reproduction

Full story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7519459.stm

Recent Keyword Searches: marijuana pregnancy over 40, fertility in your 40's, what is the percentage of a 40 year old to get pergnant the first time?, what is the lastest age a woman can get pregnant?, can 42 year old get pregnant with ivf

Photo by Baltar
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – New research shows that the plant estrogens in soy don't impair fertility in monkeys. The study was designed to test a theory that high-soy diets can compromise fertility in women.

The results, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Emory University School of Medicine, were reported today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia, Pa.

"Our results suggest that a high-soy diet probably won't compromise fertility in women," said Jay Kaplan, Ph.D., lead researcher, from Wake Forest Baptist. "But our results confirmed earlier findings that fertility may be affected by stress levels."
Women in Asian countries where a lot of soy is consumed have dramatically lower rates of breast cancer than women in the United States. One explanation is that plant estrogens, called isoflavones, increase menstrual cycle length or reduce ovarian hormones – both which would reduce lifetime exposure to estrogen. However, these changes in the menstrual cycle could also impair fertility.

In a study of monkeys, which have menstrual cycles similar to those of women, Kaplan and colleagues tested the hypothesis that the estrogen in soy can affect menstrual cycles.

"Our study was designed to determine whether a soy supplement containing twice the level of plant estrogen consumed by Asian women would alter any aspect of the menstrual cycle or ovarian function in monkeys," he said.

For one year, half of the monkeys were fed a high-soy diet and half got their protein from animal sources. All monkeys were evaluated during this period for changes in ovarian hormones and menstrual cycles.

"Soy treatment did not change any characteristics of the menstrual cycle, including length, amount of bleeding or hormone levels," said Kaplan. "This suggests that any protection that soy may provide against breast cancer does not come from changes in the menstrual cycle."
He said consumption of a high-soy diet probably would not compromise fertility, although further research is warranted to evaluate effects of soy on placenta function and on the fetus.

The study did confirm earlier findings by Kaplan – that high levels of stress can affect ovarian function.

The monkeys in the study were housed in groups, where they naturally form a social hierarchy. In previous research, Kaplan found that the stress of being subordinate in the group impairs ovarian function, which means that lower levels of estrogen are produced. In both monkeys and people, reduced levels of estrogen can make menstrual cycles more variable and affect fertility.

In the current study, subordinate monkeys had reductions in ovarian hormones and changes in the menstrual cycle pattern that were observed in the earlier research.
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center

Article from EurekAlert! : http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/wfub-sld101504.php

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Found on the High FSH Support Forum board, posted by Chrissy:

I just came across this thread on the Life Extention forum. I think you have to register to read it, so I just copied and pasted the whole thread below which includes links to the studies they are talking about. I didn't read the links or the studies, I just read the thread but it sounded interesting to me because Dr. Check once mentioned to me that he thought the link to stopping menopause or getting someone over 45 pregnant had to do with a certain protein (he didn't get specific) but said he hasn't had the time to do the research necessary because he is busy with his Cooper practice and also cancer research. So a little bell went off on my head and I thought you all might want to read about it.

Here's the thread :

If you read LEF daily news New menopause research reported from Harvard University ( see link), it would appear that by supressing the bax protein women could delay menopausal ovarian failure and reap the many anti-aging benefits of staying pre-menopausal.
http://www.lef.org/news/LefDailyNews.htm?NewsID=5257&Section=AGING

There are numerous articles online supporting this like:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0608557104v1

Does anyone know of a compund or supplement that will supress the bax protein?

Some research indicates that indole-3-carbinol up-regulates bax.

Here is a whole list of compounds that react with BAX, do any look like reasonable suppresors? It says that indole-3-carbinol results in increased expression of BAX and that resveratrol results in decreased expression of BAX protein.
http://ctd.mdibl.org/detail.go;jsessionid=BDDEB3777B71D015FC0B2EB06314258A?view=ixn&type=gene&acc=BAX
According to the chart linked above, melatonin also inhibits bax and may therefor help delay menopause?
http://ctd.mdibl.org/detail.go?type=ref&db=PUBMED&acc=15964511

Also, ethanol promotes the reaction (BAX protein binds to BCL2L1 protein).
Stop drinking to delay menopause? And... aspirin results in increased expression of BAX protein.

Also - inhibin loss seems to cause menopause - can it be replaced like other hormones?

I would love to see LEF do a protocol for slowing down ovarian aging.

Scientists develop pill to delay the menopause

Many articles this week - wonder if, like many drugs that they develop over many years to be patented, there is a natural source for this??
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=461120&in_page_id=1766&ito=1490

Lowering levels of FSH hormone seems to be a main key towards delaying menopause. Many studies out of Japan and Thailand are showing that Pueraria mirifica can do just that. It also seems that, with many times the pytoestrogen content of soy, Pueraria mirifica can be used for estrogen replacement. If you are within 5 years of menpause either way, you will want to research Pueraria mirifica . Here is a link regarding the FSH.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p166682155315t1k/

Source: http://www.network54.com/Forum/209394/thread/1194542760/ALERT%21+-Harvard+study+on+the+Bax+Protein+delaying+menopause-ovarian+failure

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - According to a new study on soy and fertility levels, the latest research discounts a previous study that linked soy with male low sperm count. The recent study by a Colorado researcher questions the conclusions of a Harvard study while toting the fact that Asian cultures have been consuming soy for generations.

The small scale, preliminary study that Dr. Jorge Chavarro from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston was based on recollected intake of soyfoods and not on specific diets containing soyfoods.

Dr. Tammy Hedland, a researcher on male fertility issues, including soy, from the Health Sciences Center, Department of Pathology at the University of Colorado says, "This study is confounded by many issues, thus I feel the results should be viewed with a great deal of caution."

According to Hedland's review of his study and one she conducted the research did not find a negative relationship between soy and sperm mobility or sperm quality, which are both key factors to fertility. The study also did not determine directly what other foods, medications, supplements, existing medical conditions, sexual activities or environmental factors may have directly affected the drop in sperm count.

Generations of Asians have regularly consumed soyfoods without fertility disorders, and Asian countries have prodigiously produced very healthy, highly functioning children for centuries.

According to an article in the New Scientist, "Chavarro admits that many East Asian men consume much more soya than the participants in his trial and do not develop fertility problems. He speculates that his study found a link between soya and low sperm count because many of the participants were overweight or obese. Men with high levels of body fat produce more oestrogen than their slim counterparts."

Some researchers have gone on the record stating that Chavarro's study conflicts with the large body of U.S. government and National Institute of Health-sponsored human and primate research projects, in which controlled amounts of isoflavones from soy were fed and no effect on quantity, quality or motility of sperm were observed.

Dr. Stephen Barnes, a pharmacologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham supports colleagues in their findings that disagree with the notion of a negative soy-fertility link, "This study is the first to find this correlation. The research on soy in men has not found a negative impact on male hormones but rather has suggested a preventive effect in prostate cancer."

Source: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7008881390