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Today's almost fanatical obsession with low fat, both consumption
in the diet and on the body, could be the reason so many women
are infertile. If you have extremely low body fat, which has
caused your body to stop menstruating or made your periods
irregular, you could usefully learn about the hormone leptin.
A landmark study has shown that it can regulate periods.
Leptin (from the Greek Leptos, meaning thin), is a protein
hormone with important regulatory effects in body weight,
metabolism and reproduction. It appears to have important
functions with regard to diabetes, and it has been found that
insulin stimulates leptin production in adipose (fat) tissue.
After production in the fat tissues it is secreted into the
blood stream, where it travels to the brain and helps establish
how much energy there is for important bodily functions, such
as the formation of bone, and reproduction. Extremely thin
women, whether this is the result of illness, eating disorders,
starvation or excessive exercise, produce substantially less
leptin and often have a negative energy balance because of
this. The body then reverts to the state it was prior to puberty.
Working out regularly, and obsessively avoiding fat can
lead to irregular menses and infertility. It stands to reason,
if you do not have fat cells, or at least, not enough of them,
you could well be deficient in this hormone. It has long been
known that starvation effects the reproductive functioning
of the female. It has been estimated that at least 22% of
body weight should be fat in order to maintain healthy ovulatory
cycles.
Endocrinologist Corrine Welt, M.D., of Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston, is leading the research team. "We think
that leptin is actually the signal that tells your brain that
there is enough body fat or enough energy available to reproduce,"
she says. The doctor seems to be right. "When we started giving
them leptin, suddenly they started to grow eggs. They started
to have ovulation
again, and they started to menstruate," Dr. Welt says. Much
more research needs to be done on this hormone, but it could
lead the way to successful pregnancy for couples for whom
infertility is a
problem.
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Fertility
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