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, Dr TCM, FABORM, Diploma of Chinese medical dermatology