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Post by puddleduck on Aug 3, 2007 12:47:23 GMT -5
Hi there,
I wonder whether anyone here has managed to suppress ovulation naturally. Having established that I am ovulating, I'd now like to hold onto the remaining eggs. I'm not keen to use the combined Pill because I hate synthetic oestradiol and the way it has made me feel in the past.
Any ideas?
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Post by ouchy on Aug 3, 2007 13:26:37 GMT -5
Holding on to the eggs won't do you any good--the quality will still diminish. It's not like freezing them in liquid nitrogen. They still age.
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Post by ouchy on Aug 3, 2007 13:27:53 GMT -5
You can probably do it naturally by becoming anorexic, excercising allllllll the time, falling to an unsafe body weight, where your ovulation ceases. Obviously, I don't recommend that!
You can also stress yourself out so badly that your FSH never rises enough to ovulate. Not a good way, either!
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Post by ouchy on Aug 3, 2007 13:40:04 GMT -5
And probably a diet of only McDonald's would delay your ovulation, too!
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Post by kb on Aug 3, 2007 13:45:35 GMT -5
I dont understand why you would want to suppress it, its natural for a woman to ovulate, feel happy that your body is running correctly at least in that department, dont suppress what your body is meant to do.
Its nice that you want your eggs to last, but honestly you have so many your not going to run out, least not for a while anyway.
i think youd disrupt things too much if you try to suppress it, you would be better to have work on lengthening your luteal phase if you want to have less frequent periods.
If your trying to heal naturally, the worst thing you can do is go against your bodies natural cycle, and any naturopath will tell you the same. You need to work with it to allow the body to heal itself.
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Post by puddleduck on Aug 3, 2007 13:59:26 GMT -5
Thanks for your replies and advice. The idea of lengthening the luteal phase makes sense. So far that's already happened. In the space of three months on natural progesterone, it has gone from 7 days to 14 days. However, the main reason behind wanting to suppress ovulation for up to three cycles is to allow ovarian cysts to heal. Also, in the build up to ovulation, the oestrogen level rises. I assume that means the endo reacts more to the surge in oestrogen then? I'm finding it all rather confusing, trying to strike the balance between helping the body heal naturally and stopping the endo and cysts becoming worse. I notice that some women undergoing fertility treatment have GnRH agonist injections (ie Zoladex, Prostap) in the run up to it as this seems to boost the chances of the fertility treatment working. I wonder why?
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Post by ouchy on Aug 3, 2007 14:16:04 GMT -5
I'd say don't worry so much about estrogen! I know you're nervous about it bc you post about it in each post you make. Just try to exercise, eat healthily, and do the best for your body you can. Many women w/ endo never take GnRH treatments and their fertility is just fine. I think that whenever possible, natural is better. You may find by radical diet change or whatnot that your symptoms and ovarian cysts improve. One of the treatments for ovarian cysts (I assume you're talking about ovulatory cysts that haven't ruptured?) is to watch-and-wait. The watching-and-waiting being monitored w/ ultrasounds. That might be a good option, bc then you could see if they are shrinking from month-to-month and might not even have to worry about hormones all together.
I still think you should consult an endocrinologist or someone who can better explain estrogen and progesterone to you. It might allay some of your fears/woes.
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Post by puddleduck on Aug 3, 2007 15:46:16 GMT -5
Thanks for that. I think the main reason for my concern is that I'm 31 and have had no children. It seems the incidence of ovarian cancer, as well as breast cancer is higher in women who haven't had children. Supposedly it's good for us not to ovulate for a while. I guess there's no substitute for this other than actually having a baby. As for seeing an endocrinologist, the possibility doesn't exist in the UK...They won't refer unless you have something pointing to a pituitary/thyroid/parathyroid/adrenal, etc problem. Thanks again for your advice.
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Post by ouchy on Aug 3, 2007 16:07:06 GMT -5
There is an incidence--a slight incidence. Try not to worry about the unknown! I've known MANY women who have not had children EVER (out of choice). NONE of them ever had any type of cancer! (I even knew two ladies who were in their late 90's when they died.) The thing is, you won't know whether you will or will not get cancer. Unless you have pretty much every single woman in your family come down with breast cancer, you're probably not doing yourself any good by worrying about it. You can always get a prophylactic massectomy if you're that worried about breast cancer! If you're not worried enough to have your breasts removed for preventative measures, don't worry about it right now! As long as you're doing breast self-checks, you're probably going to be okay!
I can't give you much advice on the ovarian cancer issue other than I know a lot of people, and none of them have had it. It's not that common of a cancer.
Don't worry so much about what you *might* develop someday, or you might trick your body in to getting it!
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Post by jellybean on Aug 22, 2007 10:21:53 GMT -5
Well...in some women, dong quai actually supresses ovulation. Also, natural progesterone cream if used before and during the usual time of ovulation can supress it as well. But there's no guarantee with either. I've considered reading more about this sort of topic, I just never did get to it. I can say I didn't get pregnant while I was taking dong quai, but I'm not sure if it was actually supressing my ovulation or preventing pregnancy in some other way.
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Post by NatalieK on Nov 4, 2007 1:21:49 GMT -5
Natural progesterone has been used to suppress ovulation. A wonderful Doctor named John Lee (he has written some books on women's reproductive health) was kind of a natural progesterone pioneer. It is my understanding that he used natural progesterone to suppress ovulation in women who would benefit from such a treatment.
I am inclined to think there is a benefit to giving your body a break from the endless cycling, year in and year out, if you do not wish to have children at this time in your life. Isn't it our biology to get pregnant fairly frequently throughout our childbearing years? How do our bodies respond when we choose not to do this?
Once, when I protested to a female doctor that the birth control pill was "not natural," she passionately replied, "It's not 'natural' to always be cycling (ovulating)!" She was merely pointing out that are bodies are made to have natural breaks from constant ovulation that pregnancy has historically provided. When our bodies don't get these natural breaks, as we choose other paths in life besides childbearing, our bodies may suffer. I don't know if I subscribe to this or not, but it is one way of looking at things.
Anyway, natural progesterone can suppress ovulation, but I would be careful about researching the correct dosage, as it may be more than what is cited on the container. Look into Dr. John Lee's books.
Indigenous cultures used Wild Yam--from which natural progesterone is derived--to prevent pregnancy (by suppressing ovulation).
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Post by puddleduck on Nov 4, 2007 5:03:53 GMT -5
Hi Natalie,
I have read Dr John Lee's book on Natural Progesterone and have been using 60-70mg natural progesterone cream from CD5 to CD26 for 6 full cycles, plus charting basal body temp and other signs to check for ovulation. It has not suppressed ovulation!
Although there are benefits to not ovulating where endo and other conditions are concerned, I don't believe that using the combined Pill is a healthy way to do it. Although it induces a pseudo-pregnancy state, it is a very artificial one, since the combined Pill contains a synthetic oestradiol. There are three main types of oestrogen: oestrone, oestriol and oestradiol. In pregnancy, oestradiol levels are lower, but the levels of the other two oestrogens are much, much higher than in a non pregnancy state. Oestradiol is the hormone which is strongly related to various cancers.
I guess the only healthy way not to ovulate is to be properly pregnant. Beware of wild yam creams: they have been known to reactivate endometriosis, since they don't only contain progesterone. It's not until the wild yam is subjected to a laboratory process that it can be turned into bioidentical progesterone.
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Post by jellybean on Mar 5, 2008 17:10:45 GMT -5
You know, even though pregnancy--the 'break' from ovulation--has helped some women, for others, it's actually made matters worse. So I wouldn't be so quick to think it's such a great thing. How are you checking for ovulation anyway? Are you checking the color and consistency of your cervical mucus?
My friend with PCOS charts temperature and CM and they're all over the place. There were 3 months between 2 of her periods where, if you checked her charts, you would have thought she ovulated at least 3 times--?!?--but when she had a sonogram, she was told she still hadn't ovulated yet. So don't think any of these things are 100% right.
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Post by puddleduck on Mar 6, 2008 4:10:27 GMT -5
Hi Jellybean, It's no longer a goal of mine not to ovulate. When I did chart cycles for 8 months, I used the Fertility Friends website and had 26-31 day cycles right through, with a sustained thermal shift for up to 14 days and signs of ovulation while using progesterone cream. Like you say, there are more modern methods of detecting ovulation, but of course, unless you're trying to conceive, none of them are available. This is why I was charting using the software on Fertility Friend (although I'm not ttc: I wanted to have an idea of how fertile I am). It is more likely that if you're having gaps of several months rather than 4 weeks or so between periods, that a state of unopposed oestrogen is preventing ovulation and the consistently high oestrogen level produces copious "eggwhite" mucus. This would explain your friend "thinking" she had ovulated several times in one cycle.
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Post by jellybean on Mar 6, 2008 21:34:46 GMT -5
I've always had low progesterone levels and I've also always had strictly 28 day cycles. I could plan my periods for the year and would always be right.
As for my friend, her estrogen and progesterone levels have not been tested. She has PCOS but diabetes isn't a symptom for her, neither is hirsutism. Her only symptoms are cysts and pain. She has used natural progesterone and it hasn't helped her. Unopposed estrogen or estrogen dominance isn't always the cause of anovulation. I'm sure her real issue is her FSH:LH ratio.
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