Hi Amanda - good point. This is Marilyn Glenville's view on it
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Marilyn said: "Logically you could think that going through IVF could cause a woman to go through the menopause early because in any one year a woman only releases one egg a month at ovulation, making 12 eggs in total.
"But in an IVF cycle, drugs are used to stimulate the ovaries to produce 12 to 15 eggs in one go.
"As women we are born with our supply of eggs (ovarian reserve) and we literally go through the menopause when we have run out of eggs.
"So it would seem that simulating the ovaries to produce a lot of eggs at one time would be depleting the ovarian reserve and pushing a woman towards the menopause faster."
"But each month in a normal menstrual cycle, a woman's own hormones stimulate the growth of about 15 to 20 eggs in the ovaries and as the cycle progresses one follicle becomes dominant and continues to mature, suppressing all the other follicles which stop growing and die.
"With IVF, the drugs that are used allow more of these eggs to become dominant in one cycle so that these can be retrieved to be fertilised.
"So the woman is not producing any more eggs that she would be in a natural cycle."
ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS
"Obviously going through IVF puts a woman's body on a roller coaster of hormone fluctuations and a woman may become more sensitive to those hormone changes and so register the symptoms of the perimenopause sooner than another woman," added Marilyn.
"But it may also be that the woman who is going for IVF has a lower ovarian reserve anyway and that is why she needs medical help to get pregnant and would be going through the menopause earlier whether she had IVF or not."
Taz x
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Topic: Can 3 rounds of IVF make you go into menopause early (Read 2129 times)