The Pituitary Dysfunction - Structural Misalignment Connection
What if resolving infertility related to a dysfunctional Pituitary gland were as simple as aligning the skull bones?
The Breadcrumb Trail…
Several years ago a client told me about a dangerous Pituitary gland bleed that had landed her in Emergency. Her MRI report noted that the Pituitary gland was tilted to the right. My client had had multiple bad falls. I had been addressing back and knee pain. The new information about her MRI results led me to focus on releasing (non-painful) neck and jaw muscle tension using Bowen Therapy, Applied Myoskeletal Therapy and Upledger Craniosacral 2 techniques. In addition I developed a technique to balance tension in muscles tethering the four corners of the Sphenoid bone. (Basically I’m a body mechanic.) Two subsequent annual MRIs showed that her Pituitary gland issue had stabilized.
A snowboarder in her 30s diagnosed with PCOS came to see me after her first IVF transfer failed. Several years earlier she’d suffered a severe blow to the back of the head. After I resolved jaw, Occiput, and Sphenoid misalignment, as well as considerable pain in other parts of her body, her next IVF succeeded.
A healthy woman in her early 30s had suffered four concussions. She was not a fertility client. She came to see me for neck pain. I dealt with muscle tension in the left posterior neck and left temporalis. She became pregnant within weeks after the resolution of one-sided neck muscle tension. Coincidence?
A fertility client with a very low sperm count and poor sperm motility had been in an ATV accident several years previously that damaged his leg. He had recovered and was fit, healthy and not in pain. However, I discovered that his Occiput was pulled inferior on the left side due to an associated whiplash injury. His physician told him that “the signal wasn’t getting from his Pituitary to his Testes” to make sperm.
Thanks to these and other clients, I was beginning to see a pattern that may already be widely known by endocrinologists, but to misquote Bones, the Star Trek physician: “I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”
Here’s my hypothesis: structural misalignment of the Sphenoid bone that cradles the Pituitary gland can potentially cause infertility. How so? Read further for the explanation.
The Pituitary Gland
Imagine a butterfly-shaped bone — the Sphenoid — inside your skull behind your eyes that is tethered at its four corners by muscles at the temples and jaw. Imagine that unbalanced jaw muscle tension pulls the Sphenoid down at one corner, tilting that butterfly-shaped bone like a teeter-totter. The Sella turcica forms a bone “pocket” in the Sphenoid. The anterior and posterior lobes of the Pituitary gland dandle inside the Sella turcica. Therefore if the entire Sphenoid tilts, so will the two lobes of the Pituitary gland. If the tilt is significant, the result would be that the anterior or posterior lobe is pressed by gravity against bone rather than dangling freely on its stalk.
I asked myself, “Could pressure on the Pituitary impair the gland’s ability to produce hormones crucial to fertility?”
The Pituitary Gland is Essential for Fertility
The Pituitary gland is located deep in the brain approximately at eye level. It’s the master hormone gland. It sends two important messenger hormones — Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing Hormone (LH) — via the blood to the ovaries in women and the testes in men.
FSH
In women, FSH stimulates development of egg follicles in the ovary prior to ovulation. In men, it stimulates sperm production. Learn more about FSH at Your Hormones.
LH
In women, LH activates ovulation and stimulates production of progesterone to prepare the lining of the uterus for fertilized egg implantation. In men, LH stimulates the testes to produce testosterone, which is needed for sperm manufacture. Learn more about LH at Your Hormones.
So for my male fertility client, if his Pituitary does not produce enough FSH and LH and release it into the bloodstream, the “signal does not get through” to the testes to produce testosterone and quantities of sperm.
In females with fertility issues, low FSH and/or LH can lead to problems with egg follicle development, ovulation, and/or production of enough progesterone to support pregnancy.
Bottom line, if there is a problem with the Pituitary gland’s production of FSH and LH, the result is infertility.
For Practitioners: Two Assessments for Sphenoid Bone Alignment.
Assess the Occiput
Assess the back of the skull (Occiput) of the male or female struggling with infertility. With the client supine, sit at the head and curl fingertips of both hands around the edges of the Occiput to the left and right of the spine. Is one side of the Occiput more inferior (closer to the feet) than the other? If the answer is yes, the Sphenoid is also tilted. The solution is to release neck muscle tension until both sides of the Occiput are level.
2. Assess the jaw for temporomandibular disorder (TMD)
There are four sets of masticatory muscles: Medial Pterygoid, Lateral Pterygoid, Temporalis and Masseter.
Propping the mouth open for hours of dental work, whiplash, teeth grinding and clenching can all generate unbalanced muscle tension severe enough to pull the movable lower jaw (Mandible) out of alignment with the fixed upper jaw (Maxilla).
Does the client have jaw pain or grind their teeth at night? Assess whether the lower jaw wobbles on opening and closing. Compare muscle tension on the left and right sides of the jaw.
Photo Credit: Cookie Studio, Freepik.com
To correct a Sphenoid tilt, you therefore must:
a) first resolve any neck muscle tension imbalance until both sides of the Occiput are level; and then,
b) equalize tension in the masseters, temporalis and pterygoid muscles.
Will Occiput & Jaw Alignment Improve Fertility?
After the Occiput and jaw issues have been addressed, and the Sphenoid bone and Pituitary gland therefore aligned, experience with female clients indicates it will be at least a month or two before they can expect improvements in LH or FSH levels to show up in blood tests. An increase in those key hormones will validate that there was indeed a Sphenoid alignment issue affecting the function of the Pituitary gland.
Remember the ATV accident client with low sperm count and poor motility? He had six sessions total of Hormonal Release the Bowen Way Fertility Protocol and whiplash treatment sessions with me. The month after his sixth session, his sperm was retested and he reported that there was no improvement. Therefore he did not book more sessions. However, several months later he verbally reported: “My sperm count almost quadrupled. Sperm motility went from 15% to 50%.” (More than 40% is considered normal.) My takeaway is that, after the structural realignment, it will take two months or longer for the Pituitary gland to heal and its LH and FSH signals to the testes to normalize.
Stay tuned for more case results. I’ll keep adding them to this post.
Madeline McBride, M.A.SC., P. Eng. is a Certified Bowenwork Practitioner (Advanced) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. www.McBridePainClinic.com. Her ability to resolve structural alignment issues in the body is informed by her civil engineering background.
Madeline is an instructor who teaches Hormonal Release the Bowen Way (HRBW) to certified Bowen Therapy practitioners. Upcoming workshops are listed here. Locate a Bowen Therapy practitioner with the HRBW advanced training by selecting a country from the Choose Country drop down menu.