Fertility Friday: A Hormonal Clue To Why Some Women, and Some Families, Have More Uterine Fibroids

Uterine fbiroids are non-cancerous muscle knots. They are common, but it is also uncommon for them to need treatment. Only 25% of all women who have fibroids will need medical treatment. However, they can be a source of significant medical problems for many women. The question is why so many women have fibroids, and truthfully we do not know.
Testosterone may be the reason some women, and some families have more uterine fibroids. Uterine fibroids are not congenital, and they don't occur with puberty, but they definitely have a hormonal link. What exactly that link is has been speculated on for many years. It has been argued that birth control pills cause fibroids, and counter arguments say that birth control pills prevent uterine fibroids. Menopause is usually accompanied by resolution of fibroids. This is coming out of the SWAN study data base which has brought forward many hormonal insight and is specifically designed to look at different ethnicity and differences between groups such as African-American vs Asians vs Caucasians. The women who had fibroids were found to have very different hormonal patterns from the women who did not have fibroids. It was not completely clear nor simplistic an explanation as just having high blood testosterone. The women with fibroids had both high free testosterone, and other factors, such as high estrogen levels. The research is very provocative and may help to determine how to design treatments that could, by modifying hormonal levels, at least for some women, can also prevent uterine fibroids.

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Passing Your Uterine Lining, Menstrual Period Norms

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously. It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

Post-Endometrial Ablation Syndrome

If you have had an endometrial ablation and have developed symptoms of pelvic pain you might have post endometrial ablation syndrome. What is post-endometrial ablation syndrome? It is a constellation of symptoms due to entrapped blood or tissue within a uterus that has previously undergone an endometrial ablation. We are able to diagnose this at Women's Health Practic e but occasionally other conditions are causing similar symptoms. Other complications of endometrial ablation include pregnancy, risks from pre-existing conditions such as a polyp or fibroid, an infection of the uterus, or a pregnancy. If you have had a tubal ligation then it is possible that the condition could be post-ablation tubal sterilization syndrome. The ablation procedure is designed to destroy all lining tissue, but in fact there is no way to confirm the completeness of the ablation. It is thought that either residual or regrowth of the tissue is producing the symptoms of post-endometrial ablation syndrom...

You Have an IUD: But a Positive Pregnancy Test

Fortunately IUD pregnancy failures are rare. But if you have an IUD for contraception, and you get a positive pregnancy test, you probably ask yourself, what next? Well, make your gyno appointment promptly, this is a condition that is not typically an emergency, but it can be and it’s not handled over the phone or on a blog, or through self diagnosis! That being said, some researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas decided to look back at over 4100 women who had IUDs and of those 42 cases who became pregnant in their institution, over about a year period of time, to help understand what these women could expect when they got to their gyno and what actually happened to their pregnancies. Accurate pregnancy diagnosis, pelvic examination, and pelvic ultrasound were the cornerstones of the evaluations. They had very specific ways they looked at their ultrasound to prove there was no pregnancy in the fallopian tube, or partially in the fallopian tube...

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