Vitex is a traditional herb for increasing milk production in nursing mothers, for relieving breast pain that occurs around menstruation, and for calming the symptoms of PMS.

This herb is also a remedy for women’s infertility, but taking more than the recommended dosage can have undesirable effects. In the recommended dose (this is something you should learn from the label, since different companies produce tinctures and extracts in different strengths), vitex decreases estrogen levels and increases progesterone levels.

Changing levels of these two hormones can be very useful in certain kinds of women’s infertility. Sometimes the problem causing infertility is essentially misplaced tissue. Bits and pieces of the endometrium lining the uterus can get lodged at the opening of the fallopian tubes, interfering with ovulation. Excessive estrogen can also cause the lining of the uterus to become too “tough” to receive the fertilized egg.

Shifting the balance of estrogen to progesterone helps all of these problems. The only drawback is that ovulation may occur earlier than expected, so fertility testing is likely to help.

However, taking too much vitex undoes all its benefits. In low doses, vitex is beneficial for managing estrogen, progesterone, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), and prolactin. In high doses, it has no effect at all.

The women who are most likely to benefit from taking vitex are those who have low progesterone levels or who don’t have periods at all. The actual clinical trials of vitex as a tool for enhancing women’s fertility have only involved 96 women, 15 of whom received vitex. Taking the herb increases chances of fertility after just 3 months, but women who take vitex for just a month or two and quit may get no benefits at all.

There are not a lot of side effects of vitex for women. It can cause dry mouth, dry nose, or dry eyes, and sometimes it can cause diarrhea the first day or two it is taken. These side effects are rare. Since this herb is used to induce menstruation, women who are already pregnant should not take it.

The term “chasteberry” originally referred to the use of the herb by men. Vitex lowers testosterone levels, and inhibits both sexual desire and fertility. The antidote for men who accidentally take vitex, however, is often to take more, for up to a week. Low doses lower male hormone production, but higher doses have no effect.

If you have been struggling with a problem of how to get pregnant for a while, you might benefit from the following advice. One of the simplest and most frequently effective methods of enhancing fertility is weight loss. This does not have to be drastic weight loss. Women who have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and men who have obstructive azoospermia sometimes benefit from losing just 2 to 5 pounds–assuming they are overweight at the start.

The benefit of weight loss in women who have subtle or frank symptoms of PCOS is hormonal. In the process of losing weight, women usually consume fewer calories. Lower food intake leads to lower blood sugar levels.

With lower blood sugar levels, the ovaries become less active. Unlike most other tissues in the body, the ovaries cannot resist the effects of insulin. If blood sugar levels are high, the ovaries will be flooded with glucose, and the only thing they can do with all the glucose is to become more active.

The ovaries make estrogen, but they also make testosterone. It’s the additional testosterone that interferes with fertility. Even when there is not enough testosterone to cause unwanted hair growth, acne, or male-pattern baldness without being male, there can be enough to testosterone to interfere with ovulation. It’s not so much what women weigh that makes the difference, as it is that the process of losing the weight that brings blood sugar levels down and stops the overproduction of testosterone.

Some men with fertility issues also benefit from losing weight. Men with obstructive azoospermia, for example, usually have “plumbing issues” trapping sperm in the testes. If the problem is pressure from the renal vein that is in turn placing pressure on the veins that supply the testicles, then 2 to 20 pounds of weight loss, if otherwise indicated, can increase sperm counts.

When the issue is non-obstructive azoospermia related to low testosterone levels, weight loss may also be helpful. Shrinking fat cells will not increase testosterone levels directly, but it will decrease estrogen production, since fat cells make estrogen. Simply shifting the ratio of estrogen to testosterone sometimes enhances fertility.

Weight loss, of course, is just one too of getting pregnant fast naturally. Changes in sexual position, common and safe nutritional supplements and herbs, also often help.

Despite anything you may have seen elsewhere on the Internet or in advertising, vitex does not contain any bioidentical hormones. Instead, chemicals naturally occurring in vitex change the way the hypothalamus and pituitary direct the body’s production of its own hormones.

The phytochemicals in vitex increase the production of follicle stimulating hormone, also known by its abbreviation, FSH. This hormone is essential to the process of releasing an egg, attached to a a structure that looks something like a microscopic garden hose, or follicle, in the woman. It is also essential to the process of releasing hundreds of millions of sperm from their follicles in the testes of the man. Women’s bodies normally have vastly more FSH than men’s bodies, but the hormone is essential for reproduction in both parents.

The problem with vitex is that FSH is not the only hormone it influences. The chemical compounds naturally occurring in vitex also affect the production of another hormone called luteinizing hormone, or LH.

In a woman’s body, lowering levels of LH reduces the production of testosterone. This can relieve many of the symptoms of PCOS that are caused by excessive testosterone, such as acne and hair growth. It can be just enough of a change to a woman’s hormonal balance that it restores ovulation, or it assists other fertility treatments in restoring ovulation.

In a man’s body, vitex also lowers the production of testosterone, but in a man’s body, this is a bad thing. Testosterone is essential to the sex drive in both men and women, but more noticeably in men. The effect of vitex on sex drive gave the herb its traditional name chasteberry.

Testosterone is also essential to the production of new sperm. Men who take vitex, therefore, often have lower sperm counts. The herb that increases fertility in women can devastate fertility in men.

When it comes to fertility, vitex is strictly for women. Men seeking to become fathers should not even handle the herb. And for any man seeking to use vitex as a male contraceptive, a warning: Consistent use of vitex by men can cause the testicles to shrink and atrophy, and also result in erectile dysfunction that cannot be treated by Viagra, Cialis, or Levitra.

You have probably heard the old advice that people with acne should avoid nuts and chocolate because they make the skin break out. The truth is, nuts and chocolate really can make your skin break out-if you have cold sores. Fatty foods in and of themselves don’t aggravate acne. The real culprit, especially in women who have PCOS, is sugar.

Excess sugar in the bloodstream has a peculiar effect on the ovaries. It stimulates them to make testosterone. This is the masculinizing hormone that also causes hair growth and mood swings. Unlike most tissues in the body, the ovaries don’t have a way to protect themselves against high blood sugars. The sugar floods in and various hormone manufacturing processes rev up. Instead of making a tiny amount of testosterone, the ovaries make a lot.

This testosterone travels to the skin. It encourages the skin to get tougher and thicker. The skin can grow right over the top of a pore, sealing oily sebum and bacteria inside. This makes a whitehead, the most common kind of acne in PCOS. Whiteheads, of course, can get infected and cause pimples and cysts.

Women who have PCOS acne of course need to cleanse the skin-but washing too often is as bad as not washing enough. Scrubbing the skin, and exposing it to hot water, causes tiny, invisible flaking. These flakes lodge over pores and create new whiteheads and pimples. It’s important not to rub a bar of soap across the skin, but instead to use liquid cleanser applied with clean fingertips.

But it’s even more important to get the sugar out of your diet. If you reduce sugar calories in your diet, your ovaries will not be as stimulated. They will make less testosterone.

This stops new blemishes from forming. It does not cure the old ones. After about 28 days, however, a low-sugar diet begins to make a huge difference in the appearance of your skin. Gentle cleansing and, if needed, treating infected pimples with benzoyl peroxide or tea tree oil can then make PCOS acne a thing of the past.

It is not necessary to lose drastic amounts of weight to give hormonal balances just enough of a nudge to permit ovulation and conception. Losing as little as 5 to 10 pounds (2.5 to 4.5 kg) is often enough. And for some women, metformin makes weight loss easier.

Metformin is a drug that makes cells all over the body, except the ovaries, more sensitive to insulin. The more sensitive the body is to insulin, the less the pancreas has to make to keep blood sugar levels normal.

The significance of insulin sensitivity in losing weight in order to manage PCOS is this: Insulin doesn’t just transport sugar out of the bloodstream. It also transports fatty acids out of the bloodstream.

In fact, insulin is 300 times more efficient at transporting fat out of the bloodstream to store in fat cells than it is at moving blood sugar. When cells become “insulin resistant,” they only resist incoming blood sugar. They don’t resist fat. All that insulin that a woman’s body isn’t using to transport glucose can be used to stuff female fat cells with just as much as they can hold.

Women still have to overeat to gain weight. High insulin levels just guarantee the formation of fat.

Metformin stops the cycle of high blood sugars, which cause greater appetite, which leads to more eating, which leads to higher blood sugars, which leads to higher insulin resistance, which leads right back to higher blood sugars, greater appetite, even higher insulin levels, and more insulin resistance. Once your blood sugars get out of balance, the problem gets worse and worse. Metformin helps women pull out of this downward spiral.

But metformin has a special benefit to the ovaries. The ovaries can’t resist insulin. They are programmed by nature always to accept sugar from the bloodstream (like cells in the brain). When sugar floods the ovaries, they make large amounts of the hormones they usually make in small amounts, like testosterone.

When women get their blood sugar levels down, they also get their testosterone levels down. Appetite becomes easier to control, weight is loss, and a downward spiral to ever greater hormonal imbalance is replaced by an upward spiral to ever greater reproductive health.

The cause of PCOS acne is elevated levels of testosterone. This masculinizing hormone is produced in the bodies of both males and females, especially during the teenage years. In addition to causing hair growth, muscle growth, and aggressive mood, it also thickens and toughens the skin.

Testosterone makes the skin grow over pores, trapping oil and bacteria inside. The immediate result is a whitehead. (A blackhead is an open pore in which the oil has darkened after exposure to the air.) The bacteria inside the pore can cause inflammation and infection resulting in a pimple.

Testosterone is a bigger factor in acne in adults than in teens. This hormone can cause the thicken and toughen at any time of life, but teenage skin is still growing fast. Adult skin is slower to respond to skincare treatment and any underlying hormonal imbalance has a really persistent effect.

Metformin helps control PCOS acne. It’s inexpensive. It’s safe for almost all women who need to take it. It does not add any female hormones to the system. It only helps bring the production of testosterone in a woman’s body back down to normal levels.

Metformin does this in two different ways. It stops the ovaries from making testosterone from a chemical called androstenedione. This helps reduce acne and hair growth.

It also makes cells all over the body-except in the ovaries-more sensitive to insulin. As you probably know, insulin is the hormone that cells use to take the glucose sugar they burn for fuel out of the bloodstream. It also helps cells store fat.

When blood sugar levels get too high, insulin resistance works the same way as an emergency shutoff at gasoline station. Cells stop responding to insulin so they won’t be overrun by sugar. The sugar stays in the bloodstream and can only be absorbed by tissues that don’t need insulin to get their glucose fuel, such as the ovaries.

When the rest of the body won’t accept sugar, the ovaries have to. Their metabolic machinery kicks into high gear and they have no choice but to produce massive amounts of hormones, including testosterone. The combination of testosterone and insulin goes to the brain and is detected by the hypothalamus, which sends out a signal that results in the production of a third hormone, luteinizing hormone. This is the hormone that keeps eggs inside the ovaries and stops ovulation.

Just getting blood sugar levels back down, one way or another, helps bring the whole endocrine system back in balance. Ideally, a combination of metformin and low-calorie, high-protein diet is ideal for lowering the testosterone levels that cause breakouts of acne. Some women see visible improvement in as little as 14 days.

When women are infertile, the most likely problem polycystic ovarian disease (PCOS). But not every woman who has PCOS has ovarian cysts, and not every woman who has ovarian cysts has PCOS. It is PCOS, a systemic condition, that is more likely to cause problems in trying to conceive than merely having a cyst or multiple cysts in the ovaries.

PCOS is a condition that affects not just the ovaries and the uterus, but also the brain.

The hormonal signal that tells the ovaries it is time to ovulate, that is, to release an egg, actually begins in the hypothalamus, a gland deep inside the brain. The hypothalamus makes a hormone called GnRH. (This is an abbreviation for gonadotrophin releasing hormone.) Waves of GnRH travel to the pituitary gland, also located in the brain.

Responding to the first hormone, the pituitary gland makes two more. These are follicle stimulating hormone, more commonly referred to as FSH, and luteinizing hormone, more commonly called LH.

FSH signals the ovaries to get an egg ready for ovulation and LH tells the ovaries to release it. Both of these hormones fall back to normal levels, unless the woman gets pregnant. Then LH levels stay high to stimulate growth of the womb.

When women have PCOS, levels of LH don’t go down just because the egg has been released. Many women who have PCOS have LH levels that stay high all the time. The ovaries get the message that the woman is pregnant, so they don’t release another egg. Treating PCOS, for these women, isn’t about cysts, it’s about lowering LH levels or helping the ovaries work as if LH levels were normal.

And the simplest way to get LH levels under control, it turns out, is to go on a diet.

It isn’t really possible to say which comes first, weight gain or the hormonal changes that keep LH levels too high. It is inaccurate to say that PCOS is a woman’s fault. However, losing weight is often enough to correct the infertility that is associated with ovarian cysts—without getting rid of the cysts.

When women lose just 2 to 5 per cent of the total body weight, sometimes just 3 or 4 pounds (1-2 kg), ovulation is restored. That is because a tiny amount of weight loss allows a lot lower production of insulin. It also stops the production of testosterone, the hormone that causes acne, hair growth, and mood swings. And when insulin and testosterone levels fall back to normal, LH levels follow.

Up to 90 per cent of all cases of ovarian cyst infertility can be reversed with nothing more than diet, usually within 12 months. Be sure to see a physician to rule out other possible causes of infertility—and if you are over 40, be sure to see a doctor within six months of trying to get pregnant on your own.

The difference between polycystic ovary syndrome and polycystic ovaries is that the syndrome may include cysts as a symptom, but does not have to.

A woman is said to have PCOS, the syndrome, if she presents two out of three of the following symptoms:

1. Failure to ovulate.

2. Symptoms of excessive testosterone such as acne or hair growth.

3. Multiple cysts in the ovaries.

If a woman has ovarian cysts but still ovulates (for instance, if she has cysts in only one ovary), and she does not exhibit signs of excessive testosterone, such as acne or hair growth, then she does not have PCOS.

Women who have PCOS are at risk for a variety of serious complications. These include endometriosis or endometrial cancer as the lining of the uterus thickens without being shed during the menstrual period. Women who have PCOS are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, hypothyroidism, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. They are also risk for a condition known as acanthosis nigrans, a blotchy darkening of the skin. Women with PCOS who get pregnant are more likely to suffer miscarriage. And they tend to have issues with weight control.

Women who have cysts in their ovaries without the hormonal imbalances of PCOS are not at risk for all of these ailments. However, while PCOS can be improved by weight control and diet, ovarian cysts from other causes typically cannot.

Women who have ovarian cysts but not PCOS generally need to be careful to avoid steroid medications. In some women who have cysts, steroids result in stimulation of stress hormones, weight gain, and hair loss-some of the same symptoms of PCOS without the underlying hormonal imbalance. In women who have cysts but not PCOS, however, just stopping the medication is enough to reverse the symptoms. Women with PCOS would need much more extensive treatment. Never stop a medication without consulting your doctor first.

If there is any good news about polycystic ovaries with or without PCOS, it is that ovarian cysts are almost never a sign of future ovarian cancer. And modern genetic testing can give women a good assessment of their future risk of this dreaded disease.

When ultrasound technology became widely available, then physicians started looking for “lumpy” ovaries. If there were clear indications that eggs were trapped inside the ovaries, then surgical procedures might be tried to release them.

But the reality is that most women who are suffering from PCOS and trying to conceive don’t have high LH levels and they don’t identifiable “lumps” in their ovaries. The real cause of PCOS for most women is something much more basic and, fortunately, much easier to fix.

The primary contributing factor in most cases of PCOS is insulin resistance. This is a term that gets quoted a lot without ever getting explained, so here are the basics.

Insulin transports sugar out of the bloodstream into the cells that need it. It fits like a key into a “lock” on the outside of the cell, allowing glucose sugar inside.

The cells then burn the glucose for fuel. The process of burning glucose creates a lot of free radicals. If they start getting too much incoming glucose, they protect themselves from free radicals by refusing the glucose. They “resist” the effects of insulin.

When cells don’t take up glucose, it stays in the bloodstream. The pancreas senses that blood sugar levels are too high, and responds by creating more insulin. Cells then become even more resistant to insulin, and blood sugar levels go even higher. In many cases this process results in diabetes.

The ovaries, however, never develop resistance to insulin. They take in more and more sugar, burning it faster and faster. This upsets their normal activities.

The ovaries normally make a lot of estrogen and a tiny amount of testosterone. Under constant stimulation from insulin, however, they make both a lot of estrogen and an unusually large amount of testosterone.

This testosterone, the hormone normally associated with masculine external characteristics, can cause acne and hair growth. And in combination with insulin it acts on the brain to send a signal to make LH, and more LH, and more LH, just as quickly as it breaks down in the bloodstream. LH levels may not get high enough to show up in blood tests, but this hormone that makes tough proteins to protect the eggs works all the time. Through a long sequence of steps, too much sugar results in a failure to ovulate. But women who are able to diet and exercise to break the cycle of insulin resistance are often able to restore fertility.

Too much sugar in the diet has insidious effects in PCOS. Most of the other organs in the body can resist high blood sugars. The ovaries cannot. When you eat too much sugar, tissues in most of your body simply become less sensitive to insulin to keep the sugar out.

Your ovaries, however, act a little like a kid with ADHD eating too much sugar. They make more estrogen. They make a great deal more testosterone. As your blood sugar levels rise, cells outside the body become testosterone-resistant, too. This traps sugar, insulin, and testosterone in your bloodstream.

The combination eventually reaches your brain and an gland inside, the hypothalamus. This gland starts sending out pulses of hormone that send instructions to the ovaries to create more of the tough protein coating that protects the eggs-trapping them inside the ovaries to ovulation becomes impossible.

The best diets for PCOS sufferers are those that lower blood sugar levels, stop insulin resistance, and prevent the spiral of events that lead to infertility. There is more than one way to do this.

The simplest approach is just to resolve to eliminate sugar out of your diet. (You’ll need to do that when you are pregnant, too, although during pregnancy it is not necessary to count calories.) It’s actually possible to get high blood sugars without eating any sugar at all, but only women who eat huge amounts of meat (1 kg a day or more) or who have diabetes experience this. For most women who suffer PCOS, the first and best step is eating less sugar.

Then it’s better to eat fewer calories, too. This doesn’t mean you have to go hungry. Chances are you have heard of crash diets like the cabbage soup diet, where you eat bowls and bowls of cabbage soup.

Well, eating a bucket of cabbage soup a day is crazy, but just a cup or a bowl of soup is good food. That little bit of soup-if it doesn’t contain appetite-stimulating MSG-is enough to keep you full long enough to avoid eating 150 to 250 calories a meal. If you can be satisfied with less, it won’t be long before you lose enough weight significantly to increase your chances of conception.

For women who are overweight, sometimes losing just 5 pounds (2.5 kg) is enough for conception to occur. Losing 10 per cent of total body mass results in conception within 12 months in the overwhelming majority of PCOS sufferers who can stick to a diet.

First, give up sugar. Then, see if you can feel full on less. Keep up your efforts and other treatments may not be necessary.