I missed three months of my period and when my doctor checked me he found that my thyroid was underactive. He put me on birth control pills. I began to menstruate but now I’m off the pills and I’m not bleeding anymore. I’m wondering if my sluggish thyroid could be my problem? I’m also overweight. [...]

If you are uncertain about whether to have a particular treatment, you should take the time to discuss the issues with your general practitioner and perhaps a second specialist. Either your general practitioner or the first specialist may refer you to a second specialist. If the first specialist refers you to another specialist for a [...]

Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) Like hMG, this drug is also derived from the urine of post-menopausal women (often nuns for ease of collection), and is given as an injection. Because the demand for it has been so high, there is also a genetically engineered form of FSH called recombinant human FSH. This medication does not [...]

Tests for the male partner It is usual for the partner to have a sperm test before the woman undergoes any testing. The reason for this is that a sperm test is a simple procedure and certainly the most convenient of all fertility tests. A sperm analysis is carried out to see if sperm are [...]

What happens? ‘Doctor T. Tube’, the infertility specialist, may see a couple like ‘Mandy’ and ‘Andy’, who say they have been trying to conceive for two years without success. Dr Tube would take a thorough history from Mandy and Andy regarding their general health, as there are some diseases which can affect fertility. Dr Tube [...]

Constipation and haemorrhoids. The hormonal and blood vessel changes in pregnancy leave women a little short on water. Whenever we get relatively ‘dry’ on the inside, or ‘dehydrated’, our poo tends to become harder. This is presumably because the large bowel has the job of resorbing water from the poo, so it will tend to [...]

This is another insect which can be transmitted by sexual contact, and also through non-sexual contact. If you happen to have scabies in the pubic region there is a fair chance that they were picked up from someone else’s pubic region, but other contact may be responsible. It is usually four weeks after infection that [...]

Will it build up in my body and make me infertile? No. Once the components of a pill are absorbed into the blood stream they hit peak concentrations in about four hours. After that there is a steady decrease in the concentration of the hormones. If you do not take another pill within thirty-six hours [...]

One of the problems with periods is that not everyone experiences exactly the same thing, and women often have changes in their periods during their life-time. Defining a ‘normal’ period is not all that easy. Menstruation is the name given to the normal loss of blood via the vagina. This is often called a ‘period’, [...]