Interesting Article on Ovulation

[lesliepear]

Women May Ovulate More Than Once a Month, Study Says
Tue Jul 8, 4:11 PM ET

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - No wonder the rhythm method does not work so well for
birth control -- scientists in Canada said on Tuesday they had found women
sometimes ovulate several times a single month.

Their finding, if verified, would overturn the traditional wisdom that women
produce an egg cell once a month. It would also help explain why "natural"
methods of birth control, based on the idea that ovulation can be predicted,
often fail.

"We are literally going to have to re-write medical textbooks," said Dr. Roger
Pierson, director of the Reproductive Biology Research Unit at the University
of Saskatchewan, who led the study.

"It's exactly why the rhythm method doesn't work."

Scientists have long known that humans have unique cycles of ovulation. Many
animals come into heat -- a time when all the males around know through smells
and visual signals that a female is ovulating and ready to conceive.

Not so with humans, who have "concealed" ovulation.

Standard medical science says a woman has a cycle running roughly 28 days in
which an egg ripens, is released by the follicle, drops into the fallopian
tube, and then is either fertilized or shed during menstruation.

Writing in the journal Fertility and Sterility, Pierson and colleagues found
this did not always happen.

"We weren't expecting this. We really weren't," Pierson said in a telephone
interview.

DAILY ULTRASOUND SCANS

In the study, Pierson, veterinarian Gregg Adams and graduate student Angela
Baerwald did daily, high-resolution ultrasound scans on 63 women for a month,
which allowed them to see the follicles very clearly.

"We had 63 women with normal menstrual cycles. Of those 63, only 50 had normal
ovarian cycles," Pierson said.

Thirteen of the women ovulated multiple times, in various different ways. And
of the other 50, 40 percent had up to three waves of activity by the follicles,
any one of which could result in the production of an egg.

The women's hormone levels did not match this activity, Pierson
said. "Hopefully this will help women explain how they got pregnant when they
really didn't want to be pregnant, and it certainly will help us design better
fertility therapies."

Apparently, measuring hormones in the blood is not enough to predict what a
woman's reproductive system is up to.

"The hormones do what they are going to do and the ovaries just follow their
merry path," Pierson said.

"We always thought that menstrual cycles and ovarian cycles were one and the
same. It turns out they are just like two political parties -- sometimes they
go along hand in hand for the good of the country and sometimes they go along
their separate ways."

Pierson's team plans longer-term studies to see if the women's patterns are
consistent from month to month.

"We don't know what's causing it -- we don't know if it is the weather or
exposure to men or grapefruit juice or what," Pierson said.

The findings, which were first seen in cattle and horses, help explain some
things that have puzzled obstetricians, Pierson said.

"It really explains how we get fraternal twins with different conception days,"
Pierson said. "Clinically, we see this all the time. We see women come in with
twins and when we do an ultrasound we see one is at one 10 weeks development
and another at seven."

Comments

[miss-leeding.livejournal.com]

that is freakin' amazing. i have been obsessed with reading everything about contraception for the past two years and have never heard of this (meaning the twins difference!) love it!

[tabbyfoo.livejournal.com]

I've heard of it before. It is possible to have twins with different fathers because of that phenomenon, but obviously it doesn't happen often.

Re:

[miss-leeding.livejournal.com]

I've heard of an Indian woman whose children (twins) have different dads. I thought the window was a matter of hours. Not weeks.

[fruitbatz.livejournal.com]

well THAT explains alot of my life..lol

[geekmom.livejournal.com]

Of course it could be that ultrasounds cause women to ovulate multiple times.

That said, my little chart has two peak days last month. Hmmmm.

[yeoww.livejournal.com]

oh my goodness.
Maybe that explains the extreme fertility rate in my family. My mom says that all a man has to do is put his shoes under a woman's bed in our family and boom! we're in the family way.