The Hemp Connection [Search results for releasing] 

I'm guessing the title of this post conjures up the story of the tortoise and the hare for many of you. Though it likely pertains, I would like to tell another reptilian story that this week's series of posts brought to mind.

Many moons ago, I traveled to Costa Rica with a couple of friends. It was egg laying season for the leatherback turtles, and one of the most important things we wanted to do while there, was to see this in action. So one night, in the middle of the night, Micki and Ginger and I took off for Playa Ocotal, where the locals told us we should go.

Soon after we arrived, a huge leatherback mama pulled herself out of the ocean, groaned and labored over dry sand for about 15 yards, dug a hole about 3' x 3' x 3' and deposited about 100 golf ball-sized eggs. It happened to be a full moon that night, and I will never forget watching this…midway through the event, mama released a tear that fully reflected the moonlight.

The Costa Ricans, famous for how they value and protect their natural wonders, had set up a protective net that kept us a safe distance from the action. It seems that turtle mamas sense the vibration of the waves crashing against the sand, and they use that to navigate their way in and out of the water. Too much foot action disorients them and interferes with the process.

The docents that evening were from a local Boy Scout troop, and they taught us more than I ever thought I would know about turtle babies. Years before, once scientists noted that babies hatching during the daytime almost never survived because they were easy prey for flying birds, they tried to help them out of that dilemma by standing watch for hatchlings. Only the babies that were manually picked up, walked to the water's edge, and deposited into the water, didn't survive, either.

From THAT experience, scientists learned that when the babies hatch, their shell bellies are not fully developed. It is the process of crawling across the sand, on their own, and some kind of interaction between shell and sand, that closes up that shell and renders the baby flotatious enough to survive. In bypassing this important process, the scientists were inadvertently drowning the creatures they so wanted to help.

So they learned, that the best that they could do, was protect, as much as possible, the environment and conditions that best supported reproduction and survival, so that the turtles could best do what they had done for eons.

Here is the little guy who appeared right between my feet while I was listening to the docents! Isn't he just precious?

I didn't even realize it at the time, but it was my first reminder that Mother Nature guards her complicated recipe for reproduction more closely than Cadbury guards its chocolate making. Mess with even one ingredient, and it may not turn out at all.

I hadn't thought of this night in a long time, but the research about myoinositol that I've been writing about brought it to mind.

Like the leatherback turtles, there are many, many steps in the process of bring babies to life and releasing them. And each of those steps, no matter how insignificant to the bystander it may seem, has an important purpose. Alter it, try to jump over it, try to convince the system that it's not necessary, and the chance of failure increases.

Every one of you seeking fertility is where you are at for a unique and different reason. It could be one step in the chain, several…your stories are as unique and varied as the pathways that go from brain to fertilized egg. It is clear, since more than 60% of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures do NOT result in a successful pregnancy, that ignoring all of the steps between your brain and fertilization and focusing on the endpoint, results in tremendous emotional, physical, and financial stress for a lot of anxious couples. It is important that attention be focused on how to maximize all of the processes occurring between brain and ovary, in order to enhance the success rate of IVF.

Some of it is lifestyle. Some of it is supplementation. None of it is a magic bullet that allows you to ignore any step along the way. Myoinositol will help those for whom myoinositol deficiency is an issue…but it won't help others with other reasons for being infertile. Removing that cluster of cases from the mix, however, will give reproductive scientists the next great step to discover and enhance.

The information I presented all last week was illuminating, but it still didn't generate a 100% success rate. We still have many questions to answer. I am excited about the new findings, and hope to be able to use the new Research Institute to help clarify the route to fertility that is best for each individual situation. As well as to gain better insight into who is most likely to benefit from myoinositol supplementation.

It's going to take a little more time to find these answers than it took to find Playa Ocotal, and it's going to require more than a roadmap and a flashlight! For that reason, I encourage all of you to do your very best to maximize the information we share about lifestyle (diet, stress management, activity), rather than waiting for science to find a miracle, or waiting for a supplement to become available in your country. It can't hurt, it might help, and your effort and the information it elucidates may generate observations important to solving the problem.

ADDENDUM: By sheer coincidence, as I was working on this post, CNN did a wonderful story on a special leatherback turtle. I know we have a lot of animal lovers reading this blog, so I'm including the link if you'd like to learn more about Clover and her very loving and unique method of assisted reproduction!

We’re all subject to variables – our moods, our family’s moods, the weather, the price of oil, and natural disasters, or the way people in Iowa vote. Some we control, some we don’t, and some we just think we control. It’s important to figure out which ones are which, and treat them accordingly, or the cumulative stress and pressure of trying to bring them back under (that elusive and imaginary sense of) control is going to result in stress. And we all know, stress doesn’t help PCOS.

Let’s assume that, if you take a moment and breathe, you know which ones fall into the category of things we can’t possibly control – earthquakes, toddler’s temper tantrums, the fact that the bananas you put in the refrigerator have rotted, and so on. Since you can’t control, LET GO OF THEM. Gripe and groan if you must, but impose a time limit on it (I suggest five minutes per day of hearty whining – laugh, but try it and see how far you get with the practice).

Now for the things you are CERTAIN you can control – being on time (really? In that traffic?), your weight (and how’s that working with PCOS?), whether or not you get pregnant on schedule (assisted reproductive technology is amazing, but it’s not entirely predictable), the shade you dye your hair (ever tried doing it yourself, only to discover that whatever’s in the box doesn’t look quite the same as the picture on the box?), or how many people you have for your perfectly balanced dinner party (darn that man for getting a stomach flu at the last minute and throwing it all off). Hmmm… I’m still struggling to identify something you can absolutely control.

So is it all hopeless, and you should give up trying to have any sense of order or control in your life? No, but you’ve got be real about it, allow for the vagaries of other people’s desires and behaviors, understand that time waits for no man (or woman), and, most importantly, get that the only thing you can control is THIS MOMENT. You can choose what you put in your mouth, whether you do two more flights on the stair-stepper, kind words or nasty words, whether you act from love or something less, and whether you’ll focus your attention on yourself or trying to control others. That’s really about it. Not much, in the end. Not your spouse, your boss, your child, your mother, the environment, or anything else that is larger than this moment, or larger than you.

Somehow, the idea of that is actually really calming. It feels overwhelming to hold on to a belief that we can, if we’re just good enough, smart enough, fast enough, or coordinated enough, control everything, or almost everything. If you believe that, you’re pulling a con on yourself, and I encourage you to look at it more closely, and start releasing some of that false belief.

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She has completed the inCYST training. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. HOUSE or her practice, or obtain referrals in the Los Angeles area, please visit her website at www.drhousemd.com, or e-mail her at AskDrHouseMD@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrhousemd.

I'm pretty well aware that I am writing this blog for a bunch of stress monsters…so I'm always on the lookout for new and practical ideas to help talk at least a few of you out of that unhappy tree…

Yesterday, former inCYST intern and soon to be inCYSTer Sarah Jones invited me to stick around the yoga studio where she works after a business meeting we had. She thought I might be interested in meeting the instructor, who is also pursuing a degree in acupuncture.

The instructor based her class around a set of acuballs…the best way to describe them is that they are like little plastic blowfish that you use to massage yourself with. You can hold them in your hand and use them on your legs, etc., or you can place your body on top of them and move back and forth to massage hard-to-reach parts of yourself.

I absolutely fell in love with how it felt to gently roll my spine over my acuballs. It felt like several sets of massage hands meticulously spreading every muscle fiber apart and stretching it to its potential. I especially loved putting it at the base of my skull and letting it do its job of releasing all of the tension that builds up from all of my computer time.

I sometimes have a hard time with yoga because of my fibroids…they make it uncomfortable to assume any position on my stomach. So when the instructor asked us to place the acuball underneath our abdomens and move back and forth, I was hesitant. It did feel uncomfortable at first, but it actually started to feel good. And when we were finished with the exercise, assuming the next stomach position didn't hurt at all. I couldn't help but think they would be a nice tool to use to help improve circulation to reproductive organs.

If you'd like to try them for yourself, you can find more information at http://www.acuball.com/

Yesterday I shared some great news from an Italian research group about myoinositol for improving fertility. In the process of corresponding, they sent me a series of articles from their lab. One of their most recent investigated the combination of myoinositol and melatonin in fertility treatment.

Here's how it looks like the story goes.

Ovulation is an inflammatory process Yes, the process of releasing an egg, and giving life, is pro-inflammatory. It takes a lot of energy to do this, and as that energy is metabolized, it's oxidizing tissue around it.

Melatonin is one of the most powerful antioxidants we have You know, if you think about this the way Mother Nature does, it makes sense that we'd want to roll over and sleep all cuddled up after sex. It is her way of protecting that fragile egg from all of the stresses of the day.

The research I read yesterday was about INOFOLIC PLUS, an Italian proprietary blend of inositol, folic acid, and melatonin. Forty-six women who had previously undergone in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and failed, used this supplement daily for 3 months before undergoing another IVF procedure. They also continued to take INOFOLIC throughout the entire IVF cycle. This study, by the way, did NOT focus on women with PCOS, merely women who had failed IVF.

Here are some of the results of the second IVF in which the supplement was used:
--Higher number of embryo transfers
--Higher embryo quality
--Where all of the subjects had failed with their first IVF the first time, 13 (28%) became pregnant during the study, 4 miscarried.

What is remarkable about this study is that the average age of these women was 39 years, an age where fertility is starting to become difficult even without a diagnosis of infertility.

The supplement is not perfect, but it shows promise for helping women for whom other strategies have failed. It seems to be a great combination of compounds for peeling off the layers of inflammatory/oxidative damage have inflicted on reproductive systems…talking your ovaries down out of the tree, so to speak. What it seems to do, is both create a higher quality egg and then protect it from the ravages of oxidation long enough for it to meet a sperm, conceive, and create an embryo.

Ahhhhhh…just love the power we have within ourselves to create healing solutions!

As I mentioned yesterday, unfortunately, INOFOLIC is not available in the United States. However, there is an important bottom line message here that cannot be ignored.

When you're not eating enough antioxidants, not delegating, working too hard, not sleeping well, not managing your stress, the melatonin Mother Nature given you to protect your eggs, may likely be channeled into fighting other damages those lifestyle choices have promoted.

Not trying to shake the eFinger at you here, it's just becoming apparent from listening to so many of your stories that when we don't take good care of ourselves, the effects can stick around for a very long time. And when we do things in an effort to eat well but don't do our homework first (such as eating vegan but not making sure all nutrients are still adequate in the diet or panicking and going on a crash diet in order to get pregnant, or overexercising as the only way to manage stress), they can hurt us in the long run.

If you start to think about your choices as"What can I do to not unnecessarily use my own antioxidant power so it can be there for that egg?"…perhaps making some of those choices you've been reluctant to take on, might become easier to embrace.

Unfer V, Raffone E, Rizzo P, Buffo S. Effect of a supplementation with myo-inositol plus melatonin on oocyte quality in women who failed to conceive in previous in vitro fertilization cycles for poor oocyte
quality: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study. Gynecol Endocrinol. 2011 Apr 5. [Epub ahead of print]

VITTORIO UNFER1, EMANUELA RAFFONE2, PIERO RIZZO2, & SILVIA BUFFO3