The Ramblings of a Middle Aged Fertility Physician whose life revolves around Eggs, Sperms & Embryos....
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Coffee and Getting Pregnant: Can Coffee Keep You From Getting Pregnant?
Does caffeine affect fertility? ) When we're feeling tired and stressed at work, a cup of coffee packed with caffeine can help get us over the afternoon (or morning) hump. That cup o' joy is great for our co-workers -- we'll snap at them less! But what about our dreams of getting pregnant?
A recent study implies that too much coffee can have a negative effect on your fertility, especially if you already are dealing with fertility issues. The study looked at couples who went through IVF treatment, but later went on to try to conceive naturally. The study showed that drinking four or more cups of coffee a day reduced a couple's chance of conceiving by 26%.
Now, four cups is a lot of coffee. Most researchers say that if you stick to less than 300 mg of caffeine a day, you'll be safe. That's about two to three 5 oz. cups of coffee (depending on how strong the brew is).
Also, it's important to consider that previous studies failed to find a connection between caffeine and fertility. The topic is certainly up for debate.
Some studies have also found a possible link between miscarriage and coffee drinking. As with infertility, the studies that warn against caffeine say less than 300 mg a day should be OK.
You don't have to cut out coffee completely. Just don't drink too much.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Ovarian Test: False Hope for Aging Ladies?
Here's something that will put you off your omelet. A UK firm called Lifestyle Choices has started selling a fertility test called Plan Ahead which purports to tell women approximately how many eggs they have left in their ovaries. Though it won't provide you with an exact number, it measures 3 different hormones to give you an "assessment."
More and more women are putting off having children until their 30s and 40s. Yet a growing body of research shows that female fertility begins to decline rapidly in the mid-30s -- leaving some women with a difficult choice: bearing children earlier or risking infertility later on.
Lifestyle Choices, a firm based in Sheffield, U.K., has begun selling a consumer test that it claims will help women make this important decision. The test, which went on the market last month, assesses the number of eggs that a woman has left in her ovaries, by measuring three different hormones.
However, some experts say that the results of these kinds of tests can be unreliable -- and therefore give women a false sense of security about delaying childbearing.
Women are born with a set number of eggs -- a number that declines with age, first slowly, then rapidly after the mid-30s. The rate of decline varies from woman to woman -- some can easily get pregnant in their 40s, while for others it's difficult or even impossible.
"Some women start to go into menopause in their 30s," says Rogerio A. Lobo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University in New York City. "Without some kind of clinical testing, or a suggestive family history, that [life stage] is impossible to guess."
Women can go to their doctor for blood or ultrasound tests that will give a sense of their fertility status. But women in the U.K. may have a new option now: a mail-order test. For £179 (Rs 15,000), they can order the test kit, go to a doctor's office for a blood test, then send the sample to a lab for analysis. Their blood is analyzed for the levels of three different hormones, which predict the number of eggs a woman has available. To interpret the results further, hormone levels are compared with the average hormone levels for the woman's age group.
"As tests go, these are as close to the best things we have out there, but there are still a lot of questions and a lot of caveats," says Lobo, who regularly measures the same three hormones in his clinic. "It can give you some information -- but it's not 100 percent."
Kim Thornton, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, thinks "the issue with all ovarian reserve testing is that the test cannot necessarily tell you that it's okay to delay childbearing. There are a lot of false negatives." An abnormal result gives a good indication that a woman may have fertility problems; but a normal result does not guarantee that a woman has several years of fertile years ahead, Thornton says.
Indeed, experts say the only way to really gauge the accuracy of the U.K. test is with a long-term clinical trial showing that women who get a "normal" result from the test can get pregnant.
Stuart Gall, commercial director of BioFusion, the parent-company of Lifestyle Choices, says the company has run some clinical trials; however, for proprietary reasons, they are not releasing the results.
The problem is, many doctors think this will give women false hope that they can delay their childbearing years, when the rate of egg decline actually varies from woman to woman. The test isn't approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at this time, so if your wife/girlfriend is starting to pressure you for that bundle of joy, you won't have to deal with this kind of data just yet.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Danish Pride?
Please go to http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Oou3N5ylvdI
What a shame! The red waters seen in the pictures is Blood. At this time of year, there is a brutal, grotesque, bloody slaughter in the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark. Denmark - A country supposedly 'civilized' & part of "THE EUROPEAN UNION ". Many people do not hear about this attack on life... so no real protests have been registered. This bloody slaughter to attend Moz to 'show' entering adulthood(!) Is absolutely incredible and no one in Denmark has moved a finger to prevent this barbarism that is committed against the Calderon - an intelligent dolphin who has the peculiarity of approaching people out of sheer curiosity. Please share this post to raise awareness against this senseless crime against defenseless dolphins!
What a shame! The red waters seen in the pictures is Blood. At this time of year, there is a brutal, grotesque, bloody slaughter in the Faroe Islands, which belong to Denmark. Denmark - A country supposedly 'civilized' & part of "THE EUROPEAN UNION ". Many people do not hear about this attack on life... so no real protests have been registered. This bloody slaughter to attend Moz to 'show' entering adulthood(!) Is absolutely incredible and no one in Denmark has moved a finger to prevent this barbarism that is committed against the Calderon - an intelligent dolphin who has the peculiarity of approaching people out of sheer curiosity. Please share this post to raise awareness against this senseless crime against defenseless dolphins!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
USB Drive Proves Fertility Conventions Give Out the Best Swag Ever
Attendees can get some pretty cool swag at big conventions, but I have yet to see a product as functionally hysterical as this sperm-shaped USB drive handed out at the American Society For Reproductive Medicine's (ASRM) 2008 conference this week. I'll tell you what—whipping this thing out at while using your laptop at Cafe Coffee Day should prove interesting.
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