Today 10-20% of couples cannot conceive after a year of trying, and these numbers are rising fast. Medical professionals are happy to explain fertility and miscarriage issues to you by using definitions such as “primary infertility,” “secondary infertility,” “Ovulation disorder,” etc. But many times these definitions only obfuscate the fact that our doctor’s can’t really tell us the why we are having trouble conceiving, have a decreased sperm count, have a hormone imbalance, have an ovulation disorder, have endometriosis, have repeat miscarriages, or seem to be having menopause symptoms at an early age.
One doctor in New York City sheds more light on real causes of miscarriages and other fertility problems than most. He runs his own laboratory where he processes highly sensitive tests for Chlamydia, Strep, Staph, and many other sexually transmitted diseases on both male and female partners. In most cases, Dr. Toth finds Chlamydia and other infections where standard labs failed to find them. If infections are present for most of Dr. Toth’s patients, one might assume they are also present in the general IVF population.
This idea raises a large number of provocative questions. Are the big, inexpensive test laboratories doing an adequate job? Even the best IVF facilities count on the big laboratories to rule out infection prior to proceeding with an IVF cycle. How many miscarriages could be prevented if our labs were more effective at finding fertility-damaging infections? What other problems do these undiagnosed, untreated infections cause? Are infections present even in successful IVF cycles? Do children inherit these infections, causing them problems down the road?
There is reason to believe that Dr. Toth’s testing methods are superior to that of the average laboratory behemoth. Dr. Toth uses highly sensitive tests costing in the neighborhood of $2,000.00 apiece. Tests at an average lab couldn’t cost more than $15.00 each. In addition, Dr. Toth cultures out his samples for at least ten days. What big lab can afford to culture their samples longer than three days? I am no expert on laboratory analysis, but there appears to be evidence to support the idea that our labs are not finding everything we need them to find. There are many issues beyond miscarriage and infertility impacted by this question–it is beyond the scope of this posting to go into the implications inadequate infectious disease testing has for other disease classes we haven’t explained, such as heart disease, autoimmune diseases, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, autism, and others.
Infertility rates, including miscarriage, seem to be rising. This may be due to the fact that at least in affluent countries, women are waiting longer to have children. Even so, the same questions come to mind: if undiagnosed infections are the primary cause of this increase, why are they increasing? Does the advent of the birth control pill in the early 60′s and newer non-barrier contraceptive devices explain this increase? This line of thought certainly presents a strong argument for the good old-fashioned use of condoms. If it’s too late for you, you might want to tell your children, nieces and nephews! An abstract discussing the ways in which Chlamydia can infect sperm can be found here.
Dr. Toth’s method for addressing the infections he finds, particularly when he finds Chlamydia, is massive antibiotic therapy. Click here for a study detailing Dr. Toth’s approach and his success rates. Chlamydia is notoriously difficult to detect and equally difficult to eradicate. To follow up an antibiotic regimen, homeopathy is worth considering.
For information on homeopathy, see my homeopathy page.
I am looking forward to updating this page with my own story of healing in this area using BEM. Stay tuned, I am not quite there yet.