Dear friend,
Anyone who’s been on the infertility rollercoaster knows Clomid. In mainstream medicine, Clomid is often the first stop before you’re on your way to bigger, scarier things, like IVF. But even for those who would never consider using IVF to conceive a child, Clomid can seem like a logical starting point for aiding natural conception.
But this week, in a new article by Kristen Curran, we’re exploring all the reasons why we might want to rethink the knee-jerk recourse to Clomid for treating infertility. For one, its non-specific targeting of all the body’s estrogen receptors has some surprisingly negative effects on cervical mucus, which is essential for conception. Read the article to find out other ways Clomid negatively impacts infertility, and to hear about alternatives to Clomid you may not know about.
The problem with Clomid, as with birth control (and nearly every approach to women’s reproductive health, outside of restorative reproductive medicine), is that it takes a blunt hammer to women’s hormones, wreaking havoc on the delicate balance of estrogen in the body—a balance that’s critical to good health and fertility.
A brand-new study from the Philippines, as covered for us by Madison Ayers, drives this important point home: birth control takes a similarly blunt-force approach to women’s hormones, containing far more synthetic estrogen and progestin than necessary for effective pregnancy prevention. To borrow a quote from This is Your Brain on Birth Control by Sarah E. Hill, Phd:
“[Taking birth control for pregnancy prevention] is sort of like dropping an atomic bomb at your house to blow out a candle. Dropping a bomb off on a house will blow out a candle. It’s just that its effects are sufficiently… nonspecific… to make this a fairly unpopular way to deal with one’s candle extinguishing needs.”
As Madison puts it for us this week, the Philippine study shows how birth control takes a “sledgehammer approach” to pregnancy prevention, and, ironically, in doing so, it inadvertently promotes fertility awareness (read the full article to find out how!).
Action call: Our friends at FACTS About Fertility and the Institute of Restorative Reproductive Medicine of America are co-hosting a fantastic conference in Minneapolis this year on September 29-30, called Revitalizing Women’s Healthcare Together. Registration is open, and CME credits are available for attendees. Find one more at this link or click on the banner below!
Best,
Grace
Grace Emily Stark
Editor
Natural Womanhood
| Is it time to rethink Clomid as an infertility treatment? You’ve heard of Clomid as an infertility treatment. But what are the side effects or other reasons Clomid may not help infertile women? And what’s the alternative? Click here to read the full article. |
| Study suggests lower estrogen dosage in birth control could still prevent pregnancy A new study suggests that a much lower estrogen dosage in hormonal birth control like the Pill could still effectively prevent pregnancy. Here are the caveats. Click here to read the full article. |