Natural Infertility Treatments

Nowadays there are many natural infertility treatment options available and the chance of a successfully treatment is very high. In the text below you can read all about the most common infertility treatments, started with Hormonal Natural Infertility Treatments, including three approaches to balance hormones, and continued with Advanced Reproductive Technologies.

Natural Infertility Treatments Options

Treatments for Natural Infertility

Hormones like estrogen, testosterone and progesterone play a very important role in women. If the hormone levels fluctuate, it has effects on the whole body. This could affect your moods, sexual desire as well as fertility and pregnancy. In fact, the imbalance of estrogen and progesterone hormones can cause infertility. These are just some of the reasons why it is very important to keep hormonal levels in balance.

Though the pharmaceutical companies would have you believe that for the treatment of hormonal natural infertility, drugs are the best solution, that isn't the case. Before you make the choice of taking synthetic hormones, you might want to consider less risky approaches, like alternative medicine or lifestyle changes. The medical establishment is becoming increasingly interested in alternative medicine since breast and ovarian cancer as well as heart diseases, blood clots and other side effects are associated with conventional HRT treatment.

Three approaches for treating Natural Infertility:
Three levels of approaches can be considered for balancing hormonal levels. These are categorized as: (1) Lifestyle Changes, (2) Alternative Medicine as natural infertility treatments and (3) Drugs and Surgery. You should always start with the least risky approach (lifestyle changes) and go on to riskier approaches (surgery/drugs) only if necessary.

(1) LIFESTYLE CHANGES
The first level involves no risk but may be the hardest way to go. You'll have to restrict yourself from many things. So if you are considering this approach, you will need a strong mind and a positive thinking for managing these changes.

Surprisingly, there has been less research on how lifestyle changes can affect hormonal imbalance. Nonetheless, techniques for stress reduction (e.g. yoga), a diet rich in estrogenic food (soy, apples, alfalfa, cherries, potatoes, rice, wheat and yams) or even becoming more fit by doing regular exercises, will have positive effects on your hormonal imbalance.

It's not easy to follow up this approach, that's why you might want to consider the next level of natural infertility treatment. Alternative medicine has proven to be excellent for balancing hormonal levels in a natural and safe way.

(2) ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AS A NATURAL INFERTILITY TREATMENT
Alternative approaches involve little or no risk and can be considered as the best and safest way for treating hormonal imbalance. In this level of approach, Herbal remedies and Acupuncture established themselves as the best treatments. Acupuncture is a Chinese medical treatment involving the insertion of very fine sterile needles into the body at specific points according to a mapping of "energy pathways". It's an excellent natural infertility treatment, but complicated to follow. A successful acupuncture treatment involves time, money and finding the right practitioner. Therefore, most women are looking for less complicated ways of alternative natural infertility treatment and think herbal remedies are a safe and effective solution.

There are basically two types of herbs for treating unbalanced hormonal levels: phytoestrogen and non-estrogenic herbs. The phytoestrogen herbs (e.g. Black Cohosh, Dong Quai) contain estrogenic components produced by plants. Though, these herbs are good for treating low hormone levels, because they replace some of the missing estrogen hormones, they aren't the best solution for treating hormonal imbalance. As a result of adding hormones from outside, your body will become less responsive to produce estrogen and progesterone on its own. This causes a further decrease of body-own hormone levels.

Unlike phytoestrogen herbs, non-estrogenic herbs, as its name suggests, don't contain any estrogen. These herbs nourish your hormonal glands into producing more efficiently your own natural hormones. This ultimately ends up in balancing not only estrogen, but also progesterone and testosterone. In other words, non-estrogenic herbs stimulate your own hormone production, by inducing the optimal functioning of the pituitary and endocrine glands. Due to this, non-estrogenic herbs, like Macafem, can be considered as the safest and best way to treat hormonal infertility naturally.

A combination of approaches is a good route to take. Lifestyle changes combined with alternative medicine will probably take care of the hormonal imbalance in a more efficiently way. Nonetheless, there will always be some women who need or want to go through the third level of approach. Side effects are inevitable, but sometimes these are worth if considered the relief this approach provides.

(3) DRUGS AND SURGERY
Surgery is a hormonal infertility treatment option for both male and female infertility. Generally it is used to correct structural problems, such as Endometriosis or Fibroids (non-cancerous growths that often occurs in the uterus walls).

There are a variety of drugs used to treat infertility. It is important to understand the most common fertility drugs and what their purpose is and to speak with your physician about the medications that will be used in your specific treatment plan.

Interventions at level 3 involve the highest risk and often the highest costs. The most common drug therapy for treating hormonal balance in the US is hormone replacement therapy (HRT). There's no doubt that this is the quickest and strongest way to combat hormonal imbalance; but, unfortunately, it entails serious side effects and increases the risk of different cancer types among women, as the following study has proven.

If you still want to consider this approach, take a visit to your physician, and be more informed about what this treatment option involves.

These three levels of approaches are not mutually exclusive. You can use different natural infertility treatments at different times or combine several at the same time. Nowadays more and more women think dealing with hormonal imbalance is best accomplished via a combination of healthy lifestyle and alternative treatments.

Advanced Reproductive Technologies

Intrauterine insemination (IUI)

Intrauterine insemination is most commonly referred to as artificial insemination. It is a relatively quick procedure and is performed in the doctor's office without any anesthesia. IUI should not be painful, although some women report mild discomfort. In this infertility treatment the woman is injected with carefully prepared sperm from the husband or a donor. IUI is often performed in conjunction with ovulation stimulating medications. It is used to treat unexplained infertility or for women with cervical mucus problems.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)

Assisted Reproductive Technology is a procedure in which a woman's ovaries are stimulated, her eggs surgically removed, combined with sperm and returned to a woman's body. ART involves several types of medical treatment, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), embryo cryopreservation, egg or embryo donation, and gestational carriers, designed to result in pregnancy. IVF is the most widely used of the ART procedures.

In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

IVF is a highly sophisticated, meticulously timed procedure, which involves removing a ripened egg or eggs from the female's ovary, fertilizing it with semen, incubating the dividing cells in a laboratory dish and then replacing the developing embryo in the uterus at the appropriate time.

Inform yourself at Female Infertility about all you should know: the causes of infertility, what you can do to prevent it naturally and the answers on frequently asked questions.