What is Anovulation?

Answer 1

Anovulation is a condition that affects between 6% and 15% of all women of childbearing age. It is a disorder of the menstrual cycle, in which a woman does not release an egg for fertilization every month.

Typically, your body sends specific hormonal signals that trigger ovulation once every month. An egg is released from your ovaries and into your fallopian tubes, where it can be fertilized. Women who are anovulatory though, do not release an egg every month. Instead, they may ovulate intermittently throughout the year, or they may not ovulate at all. Anovulation is especially worrying for some women as it can signal an underlying fertility or reproductive disorder.

Answer 2

Anovulation or Amenorrhea
What is it?

Anovulation means lack of ovulation; amenorrhea means lack of menstruation.

Both conditions prohibit conception. If you are not ovulating or menstruating, there is always a reason.

How does it work?

Ovulation and menstruation require the open, extensive communication between the brain, the pituitary gland, the ovaries, and the uterus. If they are not communicating effectively, there is either a block between the brain and the pituitary gland, the pituitary gland and the ovaries, the ovaries and the uterus, or back to the brain.

Other reasons for lack of ovulation or menstruation may include not enough body fat to produce adequate estrogen levels to keep this process going. Severe life stressors may also shut this process down. And the harder you try to get it going, the body’s “no” may be stronger than all your combined efforts. One woman at our Fertile Soul Retreats ™ stopped ovulating and menstruating every time she visited her mother. Another woman stopped ovulating and menstruating when her in-laws moved next door. And another woman quit ovulating and menstruating for over a year after her husband lost his job. Some women’s reproductive systems are so sensitive that they react to the environment more than our own conscious psyche does.

Answer 3

In medicine, anovulation is absence of ovulation when it would be normally expected (in a post-menarchal, premenopausal woman). Anovulation can result from a variety of factors:

* Stress, new environment
* Chronic mental illness, such as depression
* Chronic physical illness, such as inflammatory bowel disease, poorly controlled diabetes, tuberculosis, or anemia
* Undernutrition, specific nutrient deficiencies, inadequate body fat
* Prolonged or continuous physical exertion
* Various pharmaceutical (especially phenothiazines) and recreational drugs
* Hormone imbalances, such as prolactin or testosterone excess (e.g., polycystic ovary syndrome), hyper- or hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency or Cushing's syndrome.
* Pituitary or ovarian failure.

Some anovulatory women may have two or more contributing conditions. Anovulation can generally be reversed by ameliorating the causal factors (except in cases of permanent pituitary or ovarian failure).

For most women, alteration of menstrual periods is the principal indication of chronic anovulation. Ovulatory menstrual periods tend to be regular and predictable in terms of cycle length, duration and heaviness of bleeding, and other symptoms. Ovulatory periods are often accompanied by midcycle symptoms such as mittelschmerz or premenstrual symptoms. In contrast, anovulation usually manifests itself as irregularity of menstrual periods, that is, unpredictable variability of intervals, duration, or bleeding. Anovulation can also cause cessation of periods (secondary amenorrhea) or excessive bleeding (dysfunctional uterine bleeding). Mittelschmerz and premenstrual symptoms tend to be absent or reduced when a woman is anovulatory.

Chronic anovulation is a common cause of infertility.

In addition to the alteration of menstrual periods and infertility, chronic anovulation can cause or exacerbate other long term problems, such as hyperandrogenism or osteopenia. It plays a central role in the multiple imbalances and dysfunctions of polycystic ovary syndrome.

Answer 4

What Is Anovulation