FSH… The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Every day I get calls and emails from women from around the world asking the same question, “Can you bring down my FSH with herbs”? The story goes on. “I want to get pregnant but the doctor said my FSH is too high.” 

I will explain what I have learned about FSH as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) working exclusively with women trying to get pregnant for the past 11 years. I am not an expert on FSH but I have helped many women with “high FSH” get pregnant. 

I have found that there is a very big range of what FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) can be. The highest I heard from the women calling me was 189.  A normal FSH is 8 and below but doctors are okay with 10, but usually the cut off is 12. There are some rather rogue doctors who will be okay about a 15 if the woman is in her 20’s or early 30’s.  

But what do these numbers mean? 

Doctors seem to enjoy or at least that is my impression, telling a woman with “high FSH” that she has “old eggs” or “not many eggs left”. Oh my gosh, a healthy vibrant 40 year old woman being told she has “old eggs” is not something that can be comprehended easily. 

The bottom line is that if your FSH is too high you will not respond well to the drugs and medical procedures that are available from your doctor. MD’s do not have anything in their bag of tricks to help a woman with high FSH get pregnant other than to use a donor’s eggs.  

Let me start by giving you a “few statements of fact” as I have observed and researched.  First, no one knows what the FSH is of women who get pregnant without any challenges. Secondly, we are born with all the eggs we are ever going to have and we will die with some too.  

(By the way, I like this image because it means that we developed as eggs in the womb of our grandmothers) 

The problem seems to be that the eggs aren’t developing properly for some reason. The body is working extra hard trying to get the follicle (where the egg is) to develop and so it is producing more follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). 

In Traditional Chinese Medicine we look at what the body is actually doing to see if there is anything that might be affecting this process. A woman’s reproductive system is governed a lot by blood flow and how the Qi moves (energy or life force) and how well temperatures are regulated in the body. If we can create the normal balances in these things the body doesn’t have to work so hard and the FSH goes down naturally. 

There are great difference in how women present with these imbalances and there are thousands of Chinese herbs to bring together to address them but practically speaking there seems to be a limit. I am pretty confident that the herbs will help women with FSH of around 40 as long as she is still having her period. The higher it goes up or the more irregular her period gets the less confident I am that the herbs will help enough. 

Even if your FSH is higher than this I would advise you to try to herbs for 6 months. We should see improvement in this time. If you are not pregnant in this time I would think we should really evaluate if we would go any further. 

Remember, I said that there is a cut off with how high your FSH can be for doctors to help you? You should be aware that even if we get the FSH to go down to a perfect “magical” level, many doctors will still say that they will not have anything to offer.  Some say that “once it is high they will always use the highest number even of it goes down”.   

Not all doctors say this though. If your doctor decides to give you something, make sure to tell your herbalist because there are many Chinese herbs that you can’t take along with drugs… but there are some that you can!