Know Your Ovulation Symptoms To Manage Your Fertility

The human menstrual cycle is a hormonally regulated system that controls female reproduction and fertility. Like the phases of the Moon, it has a periodicity of approximately 28 days. As different hormones switch on and off throughout the cycle, different physiological and emotional events occur. One of these events is ovulation, the time when a woman is most fertile and therefore most likely to conceive. By knowing her ovulation symptoms, a women can more easily decide whether or not to have intercourse to either avoid or enable conception.

The first day of each menstrual cycle is defined as the day that bleeding begins. Bleeding takes place over several days and represents the time when the uterine lining, the endometrium, is shed. This is called menstruation, and it is the most obvious time point in the entire cycle. The menstrual period provides evidence that conception has not taken place. Back in the previous century, it was not possible for a women to confirm whether or not she was pregnant until her period was two weeks late. By this time, according to the above definition, she would be six weeks' pregnant.

The human female reproductive cycle occurs in three phases. The 'first' phase is called the follicular phase, prior to release of the ovum, or egg. By definition, this is the first day of bleeding, called menstruation. This is when a hormone called follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is at it highest level. FSH triggers the release of a number of ovarian follicles, each containing a single egg. When the levels of FSH go down, one of the follicles continues to develop and it begins to produce another hormone, estrogen.