Making Friends Online With Women Who Are Trying to Get Pregnant

Are you TTC (trying to conceive) with your DH (dear husband), but your DD (dear daughter) keeps interrupting your BD (baby dance, i.e., sex)? Welcome to the world of online reproductive acronyms.

During the nerve-racking, heartbreaking process of waiting for positive results from my HPTs (home pregnancy tests), I found some of my best buddies online. While it’s not cool to natter about your cycle to passersby in real life (IRL), you can find loads of women online who are also up at 3 a.m. wondering if their EWCM (egg white cervical mucus) means it’s time to do the BD, or if their CD (cycle day) is off, regardless of what it says in TCOYF (Taking Charge of Your Fertility).

No, my husband would not like me to refer to sex as the “baby dance” or know every phantom symptom I experience in the DPO (days past ovulation), but when I’m chatting with my comrades in stirrups and friends in fertility, there is no such thing as TMI (too much information). Read More

Diet, Lifestyle Changes Cut Some Infertility Risk

(HealthDay News) -- Women who followed at least five certain lifestyle and diet behaviors were about 80 percent less likely to have infertility from ovulatory disorders than women who followed none of the behaviors, a Harvard study concludes.

The analysis of 17,544 married women participating in the ongoing Nurses' Health Study II found those with the highest fertility scores: ate less trans fat and sugar from carbohydrates; consumed more protein from vegetables than from animals; ate more fiber and iron; took more multivitamins; had a lower body mass index (BMI); exercised for longer periods of time each day; and consumed more high-fat diary products and less low-fat diary products.

The relationship between these behaviors and reduced risk of infertility was similar for women regardless of age and whether they'd been pregnant in the past, said the Harvard School of Public Health authors of the study, which was published in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

"We analyzed what happens if you follow one, two, three, four, or more different factors. What we found was that, as women started following more of these recommendations, their risk of infertility dropped substantially for every one of the dietary and lifestyle strategies undertaken.

In fact, we found a sixfold difference in ovulatory infertility risk between women following five or more low-risk dietary and lifestyle habits and those following none," lead author Jorge Chavarro, a research fellow in the school's department of nutrition, said in a prepared statement.

"The key message of this paper is that making the right dietary choices and including the right amount of physical activity in your daily life may make a large difference in your probability of becoming fertile if you are experiencing problems with ovulation," senior author Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition, added.

According to the researchers, infertility affects one in six couples, in the U.S. and Europe and ovulatory problems have been identified in up to 30 percent of those cases.

More information
The U.S. National Women's Health Information Center has more about infertility.

Men with Testicular Cancer Often Become Fathers

Overall, 22 percent of couples who attempted conception after treatment of testicular cancer used some form of assisted reproductive technology. The researchers add, "With recent advances in assisted fertility techniques, more testicular cancer survivors may be helped to father children."

They say their data should help doctors in counseling "new or prior testicular cancer patients for whom fertility is of major concern." However, the team advises that it is impossible to predict with complete certainly which men will be fertile following treatment, so pretreatment sperm preservation should be offered to all patients.

SOURCE: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, November 2, 2005.
More information’s here:

More Evidence Soy Causes Fertility Problems

Many of you already know soy -- the processed kind used in countless products sold in your grocery store -- isn't a "safe" health product, despite all the rhetoric from health "experts" and food manufacturers. In fact, genistein, a major soy component, impairs the travel of sperm to an egg. A new study has found genistein to be much more harmful far earlier in the lives of mice, as it can disrupt the development of ovaries in newborn females.

Scientists injected newborn mice with three different amounts of genistein, comparable to what human babies may receive in a soy-based formula, during the first five days of life, then observed the damage.

Mice given the highest dose of genistein were infertile (the highest number of egg cells that remained in clusters and unable to separate), while those treated with lower doses had fewer pregnancies and fewer pups per litter. Because the presence of genistein prevents egg cells from separating, they are less likely to become fertilized, researchers said.

The damage genistein can do isn't confined to mothers either. Your baby may suffer from inhibited intestinal growth if you feed him or her a soy-based formula too. Just more reasons to breastfeed your baby whenever possible, or use healthier alternatives instead.

Biology of Reproduction, Vol. 174, No. 1, January 2006: 161-168

EurekAlert January 10, 2006

more info at:
http://www.dreddyclinic.com/integrated_med/integrated_med.htm