Hypothyroidism And Infertility
How Thyroid Problems Can Challenge Your Fertility
Sometimes infertility is not caused by reproductive system problems. It can be caused by diseases of other organs, including the thyroid.
When the word infertility is mentioned, people automatically think of blocked fallopian tubes, abnormal sperm or recurrent miscarriage. Rarely do they think of the thyroid gland disorders. While thyroid problems don't necessarily cause infertility, they can make getting pregnant difficult.
What Does The Thyroid Do?
The thyroid is a gland in the neck just below the adam's apple which secretes hormones into the body. These hormones - namely thyroxine and triiodothyronine - regulate the body and tell it what to do. This is necessary for good health.
Hypothyroidism
This is the name for an under-active thyroid, where not enough hormones are produced. This can slow down your intestinal system and make you constipated. Other symptoms include excessive tiredness, muscular pain, weight gain, very heavy periods or a long menstrual cycle (a greater number of weeks in between periods, reducing the chance of pregnancy).
Heavy blood loss during a period can deplete you of vitamins and can affect your chances of conception and studies have proven that overweight women have more difficulty achieving and maintaining a pregnancy. Optimal health, healthy diet, balanced vitamins, no smoking and drinking and being average weight all help to produce a healthy baby.
Hypothyroidism is sometimes hereditary (passed on through the family).
Hyperthyroidism
This is the name for an over-active thyroid, where too many hormones are produced. This can cause increased heart rate, palpitations, excessive tiredness, weight loss to an unhealthy level, light or totally absent periods. Increased heart rate can cause high blood pressure which is dangerous in pregnancy; being under weight also puts you at risk of complications and an absent period is a sign that ovulation has ceased. If this happens to you, you will need medical help to get pregnant.
Hyperthyroidism is also sometimes hereditary.
What Treatments Are There?
If you are suffering from an under-active thyroid, you may be given a synthetic version of the hormone thyroxine. This is often all that is required to bring a resolution to your symptoms. You will need to take this hormone regularly. No adverse effects have been noted in pregnant women and it has been prescribed successfully for pregnant women. It can also be used in breast feeding mothers, although it may interfere with the results of the heel prick test, which tests for hypothyroidism, if you choose to let your baby have this test.
For hyperthyroidism there are drugs which suppress the thyroid, thereby reducing the hormones produced.
There are also more drastic treatments, including radiotherapy to shrink the thyroid gland and surgery to manually reduce its size.
Once treatment has commenced for the thyroid problems, providing it is successful, you should have the same chance at pregnancy as any fertile couple.
