by Sara Wright on July 19, 2010
If you are trying to conceive, you might be interested to learn about a recent study suggesting that DHEA, a natural steroid hormone, might be a fertility booster for women.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, approximately one out of six couples experiences infertility issues.
Female infertility accounts for about half of these cases, with approximately 6 million women in the United States dealing with infertility every year.
Based on the results of a recent study conducted by the Tel Aviv University, there may be new hope for some of these women who are struggling with infertility, in the form of DHEA, or Dehydroepiandrosterone.
What is Dehydroepiandrosterone?
DHEA is a naturally occurring steroid hormone that is manufactured and secreted by the adrenal gland. This hormone is a precursor to estrogens and androgens, which are female and male sex hormones.
After a person reaches the age of 30, the production of DHEA begins to decline. In addition, people who have adrenal insufficiency, AIDS, type 2 diabetes and anorexia may have low levels of DHEA.
Recently, a research team at Tel Aviv University, which was lead by Professor Adrian Shulman of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Meir Medical Center, discovered a link between DHEA and improved chances of conceiving in women who were receiving treatment for infertility.
One group of women participating in the study received treatment for poor ovulation, while another group received the same treatment with the addition of 75 mg daily of a DHEA supplement for 40 days before starting fertility treatments, and continued for up to five months.
The results of this study were encouraging as to DHEA helping women to get pregnant!
The study revealed that the group of women who received DHEA supplements were 3 times more likely to get pregnant than the women in the other group who were not given the supplement.
The women who took the DHEA supplement were also more likely to have a healthy, normal pregnancy and delivery when compared with the women in the other group.
In fact, there was a 23% live birth rate in the DHEA group as opposed to only a 4% rate in the control group who did not receive DHEA. All but one of the pregnancies in the DHEA group resulted in healthy deliveries.
This might be great news to women who are coping with infertility!
DHEA is available over the counter, but women are encouraged to talk to their health care provider before taking it as a supplement to help them get pregnant.
Sources: American Friends of Tel Aviv University news release, July 1, 2010, American Pregnancy Association
Tagged as:
Fertility,
get pregnant,
infertility,
ovulation,
Trying To Conceive
by Laura Mercer on July 4, 2010
If you have decided to try and get pregnant, you would probably be very interested in how to use natural methods of Fertility Awareness that will speed up the process naturally, without using drugs.
Studies have shown that couples who use Fertility Awareness methods conceive up to 6 times faster than average!
Using natural methods to monitor your body’s fertility will allow you to determine which days during your cycle are your most fertile and most likely to get pregnant.
Basically, there are three main factors that you will monitor and record when you are using Fertility Awareness methods:
- Cervical Mucous
- Cervical Position
- Basal Body Temperature
If you are a woman, your cervical fluid, or mucous, changes throughout your monthly menstrual cycle. The consistence will change, and even the color. Learning what to look for when checking your cervical mucous will enable you to know when you are at your most fertile.
The position of your cervix is also an indicator of when your body is at its optimal time during the moth to conceive.
Taking your BBT, or Basal Body Temperature, every day will furnish you invaluable knowledge about what days during the month your chances of getting pregnant are optimized.
You can liken using Fertility Awareness methods to looking for a book in a big library.
For instance, let’s say you wanted to check out and read a particular book in a library, but have no idea in which area of the library or on which shelf the book is located.
You could start your search by scanning each and every book, shelf by shelf and row by row. Eventually, if you persevered, you would locate the book you wanted.
But, if you looked in the card catalog to learn the location of the book within the library, you would find it a much faster and effective method of finding it!
Fertility Awareness is similar to that scenario.
You will probably get pregnant sooner or later without monitoring the natural fertility of your body, but it would streamline the process to do so!
Tagged as:
Fertility,
fertility awareness,
get pregnant,
Trying To Conceive
by Devon Mason on June 24, 2010
If you are trying to get pregnant, you may be interested in the results of a recent study entitled “A New Look at American Motherhood” by Pew Research Company.
This study contains some very interesting information!
One tidbit of note is that new moms in the United States are older and better educated than those of 20 years ago.
The fact that there are so many older mothers doesn’t necessarily mean that these women are planning it that way. In fact, almost one-half of all mothers in every age group said that the pregnancy wasn’t planned, it just “happened.”
Although the majority of mothers are married, a record 41% of all births in the United States in 2008 were to unwed mothers.
In 1990, that percentage was only 28%, according to the results of the study “The New Demography of American Motherhood.”
The trend encompasses all ages and ethnic groups.
Almost 14% of mothers of newborn babies were 35 or older in 2008, and only about 10% were still in their teen years. This is a reversal of the age trend in 1990, when teen mothers accounted for 13% of births.
“I think everyone will welcome a decline in births to teens,” stated D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer on the study. “It’s notable that the population of teens is larger than it used to be, so there were more who could have become teen mothers.”
Currently, one out of seven births is to a mother at least 35 years old. In 1990, that ratio was only one out of 11 births to a mother in that older age group.
The majority of mothers of newborns, 54%, had at least some college education in 2008, a significant increase from 41% in 1990.
Among mothers 35 years old or older, 71% had some college education.
Improvements that have been made in medical care and fertility treatment, as well as marriage and childbearing postponed to seek additional education, all factor into the shifts.
“The rise in women’s education levels has changed the profile of the typical mother of a newborn baby,” the report said.
The report is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, along with a telephone survey in April 2009 of about 1,000 parents, likely parents and adults both male and female.
Tagged as:
Fertility,
get pregnant,
Trying To Conceive
