Is Thyroid giving you infertility?

By Dr. Shweta Goswami 

Infertility as we all know is the inability to conceive after one year of regular intercourse without contraception. It is one of the medial, social and psychological burdens in the world. The thyroid hormone regulates cellular function; abnormal thyroid function can affect your fertility. 

According to Indian Thyroid society about 70% of women with PMS have low thyroid levels, which make the ovaries less able to produce progesterone leading to PMS symptoms. 

Having trouble getting pregnant? Your thyroid could be the problem - and your doctor may not even know it. Standard blood tests miss up to 80 percent of cases in which low tissue thyroid levels are causing or contributing to infertility. 

What are the factors affecting your Thyroid health? 

Your thyroid levels can be affected by a variety of reasons such as: 

• High stress levels 
• Nutritional deficiencies, if you are not taking proper balanced diet 
• Immunity disorders 
• Excessive levels of estrogen and prolactin in the body 

Under active thyroid (hypothyroidism) is a condition in which the thyroid gland doesn't produce enough of certain important hormones. For women, there is a link between hypothyroidism and infertility. Low levels of thyroid hormone can interfere with ovulation, which impairs fertility. In addition, some of the underlying causes of hypothyroidism — such as certain autoimmune or pituitary disorders — impair fertility. 

Since standard thyroid blood tests are not sensitive enough to detect low ovarian tissue levels the majority of the time, Women must find a knowledgeable physician who understands that standard tests will often not be useful in detecting low ovarian thyroid levels. 

Let’s look at the symptoms of developing thyroid: 

The symptoms of hypothyroidism can be of many types. Some patients show no symptoms, while others show some marked symptoms. The symptoms usually depend on the severity of the hormone deficiency and the rate at which it develops in the patient. The symptoms are usually milder at the beginning but develop gradually as the condition deteriorates.

• weight gain 
• fatigue 
• constipation 
• muscle

How old is too old to have a baby.?

By Dr. Shweta Goswami 

We all witnessed the recent news of an Indian couple where the woman of 72 years of age and her husband 79 years of age gave birth to a baby boy but at the same time we know that age factor is directly associated with decreasing fertility in women; their eggs grow old. But age does affect the fertility level in men too. 

Yes, you heard it right. Age is not a difficulty in women but after the age of 30, there is a drop in testosterone of 1% per year in men too. Testosterone is the energy, the hormone that you need to make good-quality sperm. It’s not just women who have to worry about their ticking reproductive clock. Men's sperm quality seems to decline after the age of 35. The older a man is the more his sperm cells are dived, and the more divisions present, the more there is a chance for an abnormality to occur. 

In males, sperm motility changed with age. Sperm motility is how well the sperm swim. Sperm motility is usually the best before age 25 and lowest after age 55. In fact, when comparing the number of “good swimming” sperm in men between the ages 30 to 35 with men over age 55, sperm motility decreased by 54 percent. 

In fact many studies have claimed that pregnancy rates decrease between 23% to 38% in comparisons between men under 30 and men over 50. Increased paternal age