Coming to the decision to use a donor egg usually doesn’t come easy. Donor eggs are never anyone’s first option. They can however, be an amazing gift to get you back on the path to parenthood when other options have not succeeded.
Understandably, stress may have been a little high over the last few weeks. If you’ve noticed a change to your menstrual cycle - longer cycle, more PMS, acne, etc., this is not too surprising because stress can have a direct impact on your reproductive hormones.
Stress & Your Cycle
Our stress hormone, cortisol, is constantly talking to our brain (the hypothalamus and pituitary). High or chronic stress impacts how our brain releases other hormones, such as FSH and LH, which indirectly influences our hormone balance.
On my first visit with a patient, I run a series of in-office labs to assess for pH balance, adrenal function, microbiome status, and nutrient levels. It’s a simple set of labs that we use your urine, saliva and a drop of your blood to run, that tells us very valuable information about the status of your cellular environment
The takeaway message from this publication is acupuncture dosage matters when it comes to increasing your chances of a live birth when acupuncture is used in an IVF cycle. Acupuncture has a compounded effect, and just receiving acupuncture on transfer day may not provide the same benefit as a series of sessions leading up to transfer and including on transfer day.
It’s October 16thand for 16 days now I have been staring at a blank page trying to write a blog. I wanted to write a blog that could be helpful or insightful for the readers here who have (or know someone who has) lost a baby; whether by miscarriage, a baby born sleeping, or a child lost too soon.
Our Grandparents are filled with information, and we traditionally seek knowledge from them when we were looking for life's answers. Today we first search google for tidbits of information and rarely use our grandparent's experience. Unfortunately google often overwhelms us with information in contrast to our Grandparents as they would provide us with a few pieces of clear useful actions. Their common sense approach is often not so common with people today.
Did you know that the most important time to optimize your fertility (and that of your male partner if you have one) is during the 100 days before conception occurs?
Your eggs need proper blood flow, oxygenation, balanced hormones and specific nutrients in order to reach their peak fertility potential.
Let me first start by saying that the key to a healthy pregnancy is, a healthy egg, a healthy sperm and a healthy uterus (and body). So when I get to treat all three, it almost always leads to my best success stories :)
The last thing patients typically want to hear when they’re awaiting their first second, third, or fifth round of IVF is to wait three more months. But those three months of serious treatment has the potential to make an enormous difference on your IVF results.
It is international pride month, and it has me thinking about reproductive health and the lack of safe spaces for people from the LGBTQIA2+ community to talk about their reproductive health. Working in reproductive health, I feel it is my duty to make sure people know that they have a safe space to talk about their reproductive health with me.
