Inflammation and fertility

From The vancouver Sun

“Characteristics of eggs are influenced by the environment in which they develop within the ovary,” lead author Dr. Rebecca Robker, from Adelaide University, Australia, said in a statement. “Our study found that obese women have abnormally high levels of fats and inflammation in the fluid surrounding their eggs, which can impact an egg’s developmental potential.”

Headlines like this confirm how chronic inflammation can impact our heath, particularly our reproductive health- probably the most sensitive part of ourselves. The thinking here really isn’t rocket science either, it is actually common sense. Life is dependent on the environment around it to grow and be healthy. If that environment is toxic, as many of the chemicals released through inflammation are, then the life growing in it will be less than optimum. The article quoted above is in relation to inflammation associated with obesity, but there are many other inflammatory states that may also swamp the body with toxic chemicals (called cytokines), thus degrading reproductive health.

Endometriosis, an inflammatory condition in women where the lining of the uterus ends up growing in places outside of the uterus, has been shown to directly impact fertility via deteriorating egg quality within the ovary, impairing fertilization, and impairing embryo implantation. The main reasoning behind endometriosis causing infertility is due to inflammatory cytokines being released into the peritoneal cavity and follicular fluid surrounding the egg, which then degenerate the quality of the egg and/ or embryo. A good thing to note is that Chinese herbal medicine has been found to directly lower the inflammatory cytokines responsible for egg destruction, leading to better egg quality and higher fertilization rates.

So you are probably reading this going thinking, “well what does this have to do with my skin?”, seeing as you are reading this on a Chinese dermatology web site! Well the reason, and what is of a big interest to me, is that many of the same inflammatory cytokines found to be destructive to reproductive health in conditions like endometriosis are also present, systemically, in other disorders like psoriasis and eczema. I have not yet found research that verifies this, but it is easy to infer that if there are similar toxic chemicals being released in endometriosis as in many skin diseases, then these disorders may have similar effects on human reproductive health. My clinical experience to date would confirm this, as I have now seen many patients with either psoriasis or eczema, who have also struggled with their fertility, both naturally and when using assisted techniques like in vitro fertilization (IVF).

This all goes to show that, according to Chinese medical philosophy, that ones fertility is a reflection of ones overall health. And by working on ones health, ones fertility is enhanced. Good health and healthy fertility stem from the same source.

Dr. Trevor Erikson