“IVF abroad” — that’s a popular google search, and one that will immediately direct you toward fertility clinics in Turkey, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and cheap fertility clinic directory lists… Clinics in Russia, India, and the Ukraine are also very popular among fertility tourists, and Americans often consider Mexico too. The appeal of IVF clinics in other countries is purely financial for many. Those who are looking into foreign fertility clinics may be amazed at the price difference compared to clinics in their own countries.  What’s more, fertility clinics in countries such as Russia and India will offer treatment without any waiting lists, and often offer donor eggs immediately and at a relatively low cost to those who need them.

But how do you go about finding a reputable fertility clinic in other countries, what other country do you choose? Determining the price range of IVF cycles is not so difficult, and this is a good place to start — don’t, of course, forget to check the price of plane tickets as well. Next up, those who are considering fertility tourism should contact the ministry of health, medical board, or equivalent organization and ask for a list of licensed IVF clinics. The process of finding a reputable clinic will be easier for you if you have friends or relatives in the country you are looking into, but it will be possible to get most information you need even without that. In order to get a better feel for the level of expertise offered, it pays off to take a critical look at the country’s overall quality of healthcare.

Once you have made contact with a clinic, ask thorough questions about the education of your healthcare team. Look at their medical licenses. And don’t assume that they’re real or current; check with the relevant authority. This goes for private physicians in any country of course. I’m not saying terrible doctors only practice “abroad” (whatever that means for you), only that it may be more difficult to catch cowboys out in a country you don’t live in and know nothing about.

One appealing thing to do is to google the name of a clinic you’re king at for reviews. Beware that reviews you come across are often actually hidden adverts, placed on the internet by the clinics themselves. I have seen the same thing occur on public forums on the web too. One needs more than a little common sense to find a good IVF clinic in a country one is not familiar with.

Trying to conceive for longer than a year may indicate fertility problems in you, your partner, or both – particularly if you are both young(ish) and trying to live a healthy life. If you are over 40, you may want to consider making an appointment with a fertility specialist. The same thing goes for couples who suspect they have an underlying medical problem that could be causing fertility problems.

Before you do look for medical help, or simultaneously, you may want to consider the following:

• Are you having regular intercourse? Too much, or too little, can result in issues with a man’s sperm quality and sperm count.
• Are you aware of the date on which you ovulate? If so, which method are you using to determine your most fertile days? Consider using ovulation tests if you are not already doing so.
• Are you sure you are ovulating at all?
• Are there any aspects of your lifestyle that could have a negative impact on your fertility? This could be smoking, drinking alcohol, or being obese, for instance.

Sometimes, the cause behind infertility can be very simple and easy to solve. But if you are not pregnant because of medical issues, you will certainly benefit from being aware of those issues so that you can take steps to overcome your infertility.

What conclusions to you arrive at from those simple facts? What do you do when you have been trying to get pregnant, and are wondering why it is not happening? Many couples don’t feel comfortable with going to the doctor as soon as the 12 month mark has hit, and would like to know if there is anything else they can do to find out what causes their infertility, and perhaps even cure it.

When it comes to male infertility, lifestyle factors are often at play. Quitting the use of substances that harm fertility and sperm (alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, fast food) and eating the right foods, that improve the quality of sperm, sperm count, and morphology and motility, certainly hold potential for many men. Simply changing your eating habits may just do the trick for you.

But of course, when a couple has trouble conceiving, they want to know what is causing the infertility. More and more men are asking themselves if there is anything they can do in terms of infertility testing, without a doctor involved. Just recently, that would have sounded like utopia. How could you possible determine what the cause of your infertility is, or even which partner has a problem, without medical help?

That is going to change soon. This month, a new male fertility testing kit was approved, and it should already be available to buy online. If you wait a little longer, you will be able to buy “SpermCheck Fertility” in pharmacies across the United States. The new at-home male fertility tests check a man’s sperm count. I’m sure that I have no need to mention here that a low sperm count is not the only thing that can cause male infertility, but checking this figure is a start in the right direction.

If you find out through this DIY sperm count test that your sperm count (or that of your partner) is low, you can seek help for that. If sperm count is not the problem, you might want to go to the doctor for additional testing.

A laparoscopy is not carried out just for infertility testing. The term refers to a “keyhole surgery” in which a small incision made in the abdomen. This is done to provide the surgical team access to the abdominal cavity, normally for exploratory purposes. This procedure can be used to diagnose liver cancer, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and more. This minimally invasive surgery is also used to remove scar tissue or treat an ectopic pregnancy.

If you are going to have a laparoscopy as a diagnostic test for infertility, you will have to go to the hospital. A laparoscopy is carried out under general anesthesia. One or more incisions are made, depending on the needs of the surgeon. As a rule, laparoscopies performed for diagnostic reasons only do not take very long. While your surgery is ongoing, your doctor will take a look around, and might take some tissue for a biopsy.

While a laparoscopy is minimally invasive, you will feel the affects of the anesthesia afterward, and the spot where the incision was made is likely to feel sore. You will feel fatigued and might have a sore throat from the tube that is placed to help you breathe during surgery. Still, you will be able to go home the same day you had the laparoscopy, and after some rest and recuperation, you will soon be back on your feet.

Hopefully, after your laparoscopy, your medical team will know how to move forward with fertility treatments, and you will be a step closer to conceiving a baby. Sometimes, you will have a diagnosis immediately after your surgery, but you will often have to wait a while for lab results to come back.

One Britsh study conducted in Belfast showed that women were much more likely than the general population to be depressed after unsuccessful infertility treatment. That is hardly surprising, but what does that mean for a marriage? Funnily enough, another British source states that the divorce rate is much lower among couples who suffer from infertility than for the population at large – 10 percent vs 50 percent!

We at Trying To Conceive are not psychologists, but we know from experience that the key to keeping your marriage as healthy as possible is to share your grief, and talk about your feelings. If you have a husband who has a different grieving style to yours, that can be a bit of a challenge. Some men love to pretend everything smells like soap and roses, while breaking on the inside. There are even women who have the same tendency.

If you suspect that the way you deal with your feelings around infertility is different to your husband’s coping mechanism, couples’ counseling is definitely a good idea. Your counselor can point out what you both need from each other, and help you find ways to achieve it.

Making time for each other and doing things that are totally unrelated to any baby-making ventures you might have on the go is also very important. Remember that you are two people who love each other for what you really are, and that your marriage is about that much more than having a baby.

Perhaps doing fun things is even more important than talking about your feelings and infertility. What did you do when you first started going out together? Do you remember nights out, walks through the neigborhood, having cheap meals at your local fast food joint? Do you remember how you felt when you first fell in love? Try to revisit those times, be creative, and enjoy yourselves!

Sarah Robertson, who thinks that sperm sends out what she calls “signaling molecules”, says: “We used to think that if a couple couldn’t get pregnant, and the man’s semen test was normal, the problem lay with the woman. But it appears this is not always the case.”

She goes on to describe the fertilization process as a “two-way dance”, rather than the one way street sperm’s fight to reach an egg has been universally known as, an Associated Free Press report says..

“The male provides information that increases the chances of conception and progression to pregnancy,” Robertson argues, “but the female body has a quality control system which needs convincing that his sperm is compatible. That’s where the dance can go wrong with some couples – if the male signals are not strong enough, or if the female system is too ‘choosy’.”

While I don’t know nearly enough about this theory to say whether it is credible or not, it is certainly fascinating, and even logical. The female body is not a passive vessel designed to do whatever men dictate. But if these claims are true, then why do millions of women have children with abusive partners, who were clearly not a good choice of father? Why do women end up pregnant after a rape?

This theory is certainly not one without flaws, but I am hoping to read more about it as research is ongoing. Perhaps, as Robertson is hoping, this study will even help couples solve their infertility problems in the future. Watch this space!

There is no single entity called “Chinese herbs.” The whole idea of Traditional Chinese Medicine is that different combinations of herbs are appropriate for different people who have the same condition. No Chinese herbal formula treats each and every case of men’s infertility or each and every case of women’s infertility.

Chinese herbal medicine often treats men’s infertility with two herbs, astragalus and epimedium. Better known as an immune stimulant, astragalus contains compounds that stimulate sperm motility, helping sperm “swim” further past the cervical mucus into the uterus. Epimedium, better known as an aphrodisiac, stimulates the production of seminal fluid. Neither herb should be used for more than three months at a time, since the response of the male reproductive tract to these herbs decreases over time.

Men who have had chemotherapy are sometimes treated with a Chinese herbal formula better known by its Japanese name, hochu-ekki-to. This formula is well known in Japan as a method of increasing sperm count in men who have been treated for cancer with the drug Bleomycin. It is also used to treat a variety of conditions that cause inflammation of the testicles.

The best known Chinese herb for women’s infertility is dong quai. Used by itself, dong quai is mostly recommended for treating hot flashes in menopause. Combined with peony and other herbs, however, dong quai is used to lower estrogen levels.

Decreasing estrogen during the first half of the menstrual cycle reduces the growth of endometrial tissues that may block ovulation or that may make the lining of the uterus too “rough” to receive the fertilized egg. Dong Quai and Peony Formula also reduces testosterone levels that may be problematic in polycystic ovarian syndrome with or without cysts in the ovaries, also known as PCOS.

Other formulas easiest to obtain from a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine include:

• Cinnamon Twig and Poria Pill increases bloodstream concentrations of estrodiol, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), and luteinizing hormone (LH), and also helps the uterus prepare for implantation during the first half of the menstrual period.
• Peony and Licorice Decoction is sometimes used to treat ovarian cysts whether or not they are caused by PCOS. It increases the ratio of estrogen and testosterone to both FSH and LH.
• Warm the Menses Decoction is a traditional remedy for bleeding between periods and also for normalizing the length of the menstrual period.

If a woman takes too much vitex, however, it won’t have any beneficial effect. A small amount of vitex normalizes levels of a great number of hormones, including estrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), and prolactin. A large amount of vitex causes so many changes in hormone levels that they cancel each other out.

Vitex, of course, is not the only natural therapy for endometriosis. The inflammation that accompanies endometriosis can also be reduced by taking fish oil. This is a natural source of n-3 essential fatty acids that the body uses to make anti-inflammatory hormones. If you have the rare side effect of fishy burps when you take fish oil, you can get the same n-3 essential fatty acids from spirulina.

There is good reason to believe that giving up caffeinated coffee (decaf is OK) may also help endometriosis. No medical researchers have ever run a study of giving up coffee as a treatment for endometriosis. Researchers know, however, that women who drink 7 or more cups of coffee a day are twice as likely to develop endometriosis as women who drink 3 cups of coffee a day or less.

Exercise is helpful for women who have endometriosis, but not for a reason most would expect. The endometriosis drug Danocrine (danazol) often causes masculine side effects, such as deeper voice, acne, and unwanted hair growth. These side effects are caused by changes in insulin resistance. Exercise, especially with a low-calorie diet, helps prevent these side effects.

Vitex is not the only herb that is used to treat endometriosis. The traditional Chinese herb dong quai, combined with peony root, is also used to treat endometriosis and the infertility it causes.

You have probably done everything to get pregnant: you have stopped smoking, you’ve cut the alcohol and morning coffee and you even given up the processed food.

But did you take the time to sleep enough? Did you take the time for yourself and reduce the stress? You have probably overlooked one of the most important factors: sleep.

A report that was conducted on women who were trying to conceive and the findings were astonishing: women who cut 8 hours of sleep had problems conceiving.

Most people sleep from 7 to 9 hours each night, and they need that sleeping time to function normally. The National Sleep Foundation’s (NSF) 1998 Women and Sleep Poll found that the average woman aged 30-60 sleeps only six hours and forty-one minutes during the work week. Not enough.

It has been proven that without appropriate sleep, one cannot achieve optimal health and wellness because one of body’s most important systems, the endocrine system, will start to malfunction, and when this happens the ability to conceive decreases drastically. The reason for this is the endocrine system plays one of the most important roles in terms of regulating ovulation. When woman does not get enough sleep low leptin levels occur, which is the hormone responsible for appetite – that can lead to being overweight and can impact ovulation. It is also important to bring out that people who have sleep-related problems have a significantly higher level of the stress hormone cortisol and adrenocorticotropic, they are both hormones that can suppress a healthy fertility cycle.

Research that was conducted on night-shift workers has shown that working the night shift relatively close to the day of ovulation may increase the rate of miscarriage, and the research has also shown that night shift work can cause irregular menstruation in some women which is often considered a risk factor for fertility problems.

These are all reasons good enough for getting adequate sleep at night. It is recommendable to avoid night shifts if possible. There are several ways to improve your sleep habits, and one of them they include  creating a bedtime routine and sticking with it. Try to avoid work such as checking email just before sleep, and of course skip that cup of coffee in the late afternoon.

The study was conducted by the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York and its main finding was that adenosine, which is a neuromodulator with anti-nociceptive attributes is released during acupuncture treatments. In plain English during acupuncture a natural pain-relieving molecule is released.

Moreover, adenosine is not only a pain blocker. Adenosine promotes sleep because of its role as an inhibitory neurotransmitter, and also functions to dilate the coronary arteries and relaxes the smooth muscle inside the artery walls.

Regarding fertility, the discovery of adenosine helped answered several questions. Many studies showed that acupuncture stimulates the release of beta-endorphins which are also pain-killing chemicals. Additionally, research shows that women who undergo acupuncture decrease the chance of having miscarriage and have a higher rate of live births comparing to women who do not have acupuncture during or before pregnancy.

Additionally, several studies showed, and one of them was published in Fertility and Sterility that the acupuncture itself improves implantation rates for in-vitro fertilization and reduces gonadotrophins.

Acupuncture can also be beneficial for women who suffer from PCOS, and in this case acupuncture can be beneficial because it improves hemodynamics or blood flow to the ovaries and uterine lining, which is a very important part of the conception process as well the PCOS treatment itself because blood carries hormones, electrolytes, oxygen and nutrients to target tissue and upon its return, takes debris or dead cells away from the target tissue. Acupuncture enables an increase in the patency of blood flow to any tissue and this results in a healthier tissue and a better performing organ system.