Recently, I have witnessed a number of young ladies in their early thirties reporting to the clinic with what we call pre-mature ovarian failure or in common parlance early menopause and this can be difficult to accept when one is trying to conceive. Let's take some time to understand this phenomenon.
Hormones
There are many hormones that regulate the several systems in the human body. These hormones are produced at a source, carried in the blood and act on other organs sometimes physically far removed from the source of production. These hormones are found in males and females but to different degrees per hormone. Some of these hormones can trigger the production of other hormones when they act on a particular organ. Considering the female reproductive system, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) produced from a part in the brain triggers the production of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH), which in effect act on the ovaries to stimulate the production of eggs.
Pool of eggs
Unlike men, women are born with their eggs already in stock. At birth, there are approximately 2 million eggs in the two ovaries of a baby girl. It was thought that this is the finite stock of eggs for a woman but this dogma has been recently challenged with stem cell technology (an interesting topic we can discuss some other time). These 2 million
eggs remain dormant from birth till puberty when the hormones FSH and LH are produced. During every menstrual cycle, about fifteen of these eggs are stimulated to grow but only one usually becomes the dominant one (bigger in size) and the rest all die off (about 95% of the 2 million eggs are wasted naturally). The dominant egg is matured by the interplay of FSH and LH and the egg is finally released from the ovary and travels through the fallopian tube into the uterus (womb). If a sperm meets it, it is fertilised and pregnancy begins. If there is no sperm or the egg doesn’t get fertilised, the lining of the womb peels off and the woman experiences this as menstruation (so unlike common belief, menstruation is NOT a result of the unfertilised egg that has burst releasing blood).
From puberty, the pool of eggs reduces gradually every month. The remaining pool of eggs at any point in time is known as the ovarian reserve. A number of hormonal tests can be performed to determine the ovarian reserve. The recent and most effective of these is the Antimullerian Hormone (AMH) test.
Young lady, Checked your AMH levels?
Every young lady of reproductive age is encouraged to perform an AMH test to check her ovarian reserve. This test will indicate whether you have a good or poor egg stock. When a young lady has a reduced ovarian reserve, some decisions to take serious include thinking twice before performing an abortion, giving birth as early as practicable or freezing some of your eggs at a reputable fertility clinic for future use.
Check your ovarian reserve now.
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