Fertility Failure Fix?

When fertility treatments fail patients and their gynos look for what new strategies can help them conceive. In the broad sense we explain fertility to our patients fairly simply: we have to ovulate, the egg has to meet up with the sperm, it has to implant. And the ovulation treatments aim to make this happen, and literally dozens of medications and perhaps hundreds of dosing and timing strategies have been tried. We say that these three 'simple' steps is all it takes, but of course there are many delicate steps in the ovulation process, and some women will just not respond to the treatments we give. One newer treatment that is fairly controversial is the use of Growth Hormone (GH) to improve ovulation. Growth Hormone is a lesser known hormone of the pituitary gland that also makes the ovulation stimulating hormones FSH and LH. It's been more commonly abused by athletes and body builders than by physicians who have only ever used it to treat rare disorders of children. It's use in fertility has been in small research settings. But as we have discovered GH deficiencies in women who are aging and fatigued, we have now begun to suspect that some women who are infertile have this deficiency as well. It may be a test for you to discuss with your gyno if you have not been able to fix your fertility.