Re: Fertility problems and a chamber of horrors

[Guest guest]

The files had this: FERTILITY: Feverfew (women).

[Guest guest]

I work in a compounding pharmacy and know this: wild yam, unaltered, isn't

strong enough to be effective in the human body. However, the bio-identical

hormone progesterone is derived from yam whose molecule has been modified in a

lab to resemble exactly the progesterone molecule produced by the body. It is

then able to fit perfectly into the body's progesterone receptors, as if it had

been produced by the body itself.

____________________

Here is an excerpt from " What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause " by

the late Lee MD, page 244.

The use of natural progesterone can give women the power to enhance their

fertility without a lot of expensive office visits and prescription hormones.

It also flies in the face of mainstream medicine's approach to fertility, which

doesn't trouble me since their success rate in achieving conception is

depressingly low. It's no wonder - they are prescribing the wrong hormones!

Synthetic estrogens and progestins generally cause more harm than they solve.

I believe that estrogen dominance from progesterone deficiency has caused a near

epidemic of infertility among women in their mid-thirties. Excess estrogen

seems to stimulate the ovaries to overproduce follicles, which, combined with

delayed childbearing, results in an early burnout of the follicles. If you are

having difficulty in conceiving, you may be able to use progesterone to your

advantage.

I had a number of patients in my practice who had been unable to conceive. For

two to four months, I had them use natural progesterone from days five to 26 in

the cycle (stopping on day 26 to bring on menstruation). Using the progesterone

prior to ovulation effectively suppressed ovulation. After a few months of

this, I had them stop progesterone use. If you still have follicles left, they

seem to respond to a few months of suppression with enthusiasm, and the

successful maturation and release of an egg. Some of my patients who had been

trying to conceive for years had very good luck conceiving with this method.

There are even a few children named after me!

On the other side of the coin is the fact that using progesterone prior to

ovulation can suppress ovulation. In a normal menstrual cycle, the release of

progesterone by one ovary functions as a signal to the other ovary not to

ovulate - Nature's brilliant plan for avoiding multiple births. If you're using

progesterone cream prior to ovulation, chances are good both ovaries will

interpret its presence as a sign that the other ovary has ovulated, thus

effectively suppressing ovulation.

If you decide to use progesterone while trying to conceive, be sure to begin

using it only after you have ovulated each month. You can track your ovulation

by taking your temperature each morning before you get out of bed. When you

ovulate, the release of progesterone will cause a slight rise in body

temperature. Once that has happened, you can safely continue using the

progesterone cream.

If you think you may be pregnant and want the pregnancy, do NOT stop the

progesterone until you have done a pregnancy test, as a sudden drop in

progesterone levels would signal the body to shed the uterine lining, possibly

inducing an abortion. While the urine pregnancy tests you can buy at a

drugstore are reliable after day 28 of your cycle, a blood pregnancy test is

reliable within several days of conception. (You usually do not need a doctor's

prescription to get a blood pregnancy test at a local medical lab.) If it is

positive and you want to remain pregnant, you should continue to use

progesterone cream to prevent the scheduled menstrual shedding and to protect

the developing fetus from early miscarriage. Progesterone should be continued at

least until the third month of pregnancy, when the placenta becomes the major

producer of progesterone, at which time you can GRADUALLY taper your

progesterone supplementation. If blood progesterone levels remain good, you can

discontinue it altogether. By the third trimester, the placenta will be making

hundreds of times more progesterone than you would be getting with the cream

alone.

____________________

My best advice to your friend would be to find a holistic practioner. A good

place to start is here:

http://www.project-aware.org/Resource/Doctors/Doctors_1.html

In our pharmacy, anyway, we are particularly jaded toward the 'medical

establishment', and especially toward the drug giants and the FDA. Yes, we

dispense 'conventional' medications, too, but that doesn't mean we have to like

the bastards who invent them.

Big Pharma is Big Business. Big Pharma drives what doctors learn in medical

school - to prescribe drugs, its formulations that are patentable only because

they can't be found in nature. It's said that the FDA is, at least partly,

staffed by people who have worked for one or another of the drug giants.

>> Looks like there is a huge profit driven industry feeding off of another form

of human suffering, the desire of some people to have kids using bizzarily

invasive methods. <<

I secretly feel like some kind of traitor in my silent refusal to support the

G. Komen Foundation. My camp believes this to be true of your quoted

comment, that SGK is in the very lucrative business of making money for itself,

not in trying to find a cure for breast cancer. The mortality rate for breast

cancer has remained essentially unchanged since the 1950s.

Again, since it can't be patented, it isn't promoted: bio-identical progesterone

checks the effects of estrogen-dominance in a hormonally-imbalanced person, thus

being cancer-preventive (among many other wonderful things). Estrogen is

responsible for cell proliferation. Progesterone is responsible for cell

development and maturation.

Cancer cells are cells that don't have time to mature because they're too busy

reproducing themselves at the fastest possible rate. The correct ratio of

progesterone to estrogen in the body tells these cells to slow down the

multiplication, mature, and do the jobs that they were originally intended to

do.

Curing cancer, and many other afflictions, can be as simple as balancing your

hormones.

____________________

In his book " Hormones, Health and Happiness " , Hotze MD writes:

Chronic illness and disease are not caused by deficiencies of prescription

drugs. The causes are complex, relating to poor nutrition, lack of exercise, a

stressful lifestyle, a weakened immune system, and declines in levels of

hormones, to name only a few of the key contributing factors.

____________________

I hope all this rambling helps! You're definitely right about dropping the

goober food! ;-)

Good luck to your friend.

Judy

>

> A nonclient was in today who has been going the owypathic route to treat

fertility problems. Says there were 8 drugs involved, one of which cost

$5000/dose. Talk was of frozen embryos and only 3 out of the 6 eggs fertilized

and such. This was the last round her health insurance would cover in her

lifetime and as she was 40 " this was their last chance " . Normally I more

concerned with the other end of things, preventing/eliminating conception, but

this one really got me wondering in a new direction. Looks like there is a huge

profit driven industry feeding off of another form of human suffering, the

desire of some people to have kids using bizzarily invasive methods.

> The obvious answer is to treat the desire (EFT, buddhist nonattachment

meditations and such). Once that is eliminated/integrated in a healthy way life

goes on in a harmonious way. However, as an herbalist that could be an excuse

to not look up a treatment method I'm unfamiliar with. Women's studies (though

highly respecte!) are not my forte.

> I know Dr. used wild yam for increasing fertility, any ideas

out there? Seems to me a complete nutritional profile and make over (cleanses,

complete nutrition, a new healthy diet, drop the goober food) might be the

ticket. Get her health and vitality built up then she'll have the body reserves

to get pregnant. Other than wild yam I'm unfamiliar with fertility boosting

herbs (and I'm not too familiar with the wild yam at that).

> Thought I would throw this out there and see if any of you have

thoughts/insights/experience on this. Thanks,

> Chris

>