HOW TO RAISE YOUR CHANCES OF HAVING TWINS

Many couples trying to conceive hope to have twins. Their reasons vary, from ensuring that their child has a close sibling through childhood to simply wanting a large family. While multiple births occur in about 3 percent of all pregnancies in the United States each year, experts say there are some steps women can take to increase their chances of having twins. Diet, ethnicity, genetics and lifestyle all play a role in whether a woman is more apt to have twins. If you want to raise your chances of having twins, follow these guidelines.

1) Consult a fertility specialist. The most effective way to increase your chances of having twins is to undergo a fertility procedure. Specialists can prescribe medications or perform in vitro fertilization techniques that can virtually assure a multiple pregnancy.

2) Change your diet. Experts believe that certain foods raise a woman's chances of having twins.



-Dairy: A study conducted by a leading fertility specialist found that women who consume dairy products during the timeframe they're trying to conceive increase their chances of having twins by as much as 5 times over women who avoid such foods. Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF), which is produced in the livers of cows, is believed to be the chemical instigator in this phenomenon.
-Wild yams: An African tribe [yoruba] whose diet is rich in wild yams boasts a twin birth rate 4 times higher than the global average. Nutrients in the vegetable are believed to stimulate the ovaries into producing more than 1 egg during ovulation.
-Folic acid: Women who add a dietary supplement containing folic acid are 40 percent more likely to conceive twins, a recent study found. The supplement also helps reduce certain birth defects.

3) Alter your lifestyle. By making some changes in your lifestyle, you can increase your chances of having a multiple pregnancy. Some of these changes can affect your overall health, so they should be done under the care of a physician.
-Weight gain: Studies show that overweight women are more apt to have twins than women of optimum weight. Also, taller women are found to have an increased likelihood of conceiving twins.
-Breastfeeding: If you're currently breastfeeding, continue to do so during the timeframe you're trying to conceive twins. This increases your chances by 9 times.
-Birth-control pill: When women first stop taking the pill, their bodies work furiously to re-regulate their hormones. During the first month or 2 after getting off the pill, ramped up ovaries sometimes release 2 eggs.
-Multiple pregnancies: Women who become pregnant 4 times or more during their lifetimes raise the odds that they will conceive twins.

4) Assess your genetic predisposition for conceiving twins. Many other factors, including age and heredity, play significant roles in the possibility of a woman having twins.
-Maternal family history: If there are fraternal twins on the woman's side of the family, there is an increased possibility that she will bear twins. Identical twins are not thought to be hereditary.
-Age: Women 45 and older are 17 percent more likely to have twins than younger women. This is due to the body producing higher levels of FSH, or Follicle Stimulating Hormone. FSH can produce more than 1 egg during ovulation.
-Ethnicity: Women of African descent have twins at a higher rate than Caucasian women. Asian and Hispanic women are least likely to have twins.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Raise-Your-Chances-of-Having-Twins

Make una dey born twins dey full grand o,but make una no 4get say naija goverment no dey help train Child o.

4tunebest: The said yam is native to Igbo ora, a tribe in Oyo State.

Yes. you are correct.y mum z from Eruwa, a towm very close to Igbo Ora.

One woman chop that yam, she born the twins below...WHO placed the yam on red alert due to high concentrate of unidentifiable acids and rogue chemical! Na wetin you wan come chop be that abi. Goodluck Jonathan to you

Ajibam: I go 4 burgers

Abeg what kind of burger Ayam highly interested..

"CPU"=Central Processing Unit abi?

Wild yam also known as kukudunku by d yorubas is very very medicinal.it helps in curing anthritis,vaginal dryness.breast enlargemt... Etc. But presently not recommended for pregnant and nursing mothers.

hope the children won't be wild

wild yams! No wonder those group of pple are very wild!

Shaadey: Mk ah go ask my 6ta&my mum's 1st niece. . . .I'llBeBak

you sabi short cut no be small! If person use this kind writing for WAEC na f9 oo...

NA food abi na God. Abeg another topic.

I am a med doctor, grad from UCH, Ibadan. During our med student days, we had our community posting in an outskirts town called IGBOORA in oyo state. That community has the highest incidence of nonidentical twinning in the world...i think you can find it on google, well, if you can't, its probably due to racism or poor record keeping by Nigerians. But, they attribute this to the yam grown in that town...so, you can give it a try if you are into having non identical twins. I slightly recall, twinning being so common,. every family has a twin[color=#000099][/color]

Igbo ora in Oyo state has the highest number of multiple birth. They are known to consume yam alot also like the Ekiti people. Perhaps you can visit them and compare the spiece of their yam with the Ekitis and draw conclusion. No doubt certain type of yam come to play on the issue.

Odunharry: I dey come make u go ask my ma aw many tyms she eat am...2 set of twins for d family no be beans I don come back..she say she na even lyk yam talkless of wild yam Who knw wetin op dey talk?

D0N'T 4GET THAT AMALA IS FR0M YAM...

NIGERIA'S 'LAND OF TWINS' BAFFLES FERTILITY EXPERTS


(AFP) – Nov 11, 2007

IGBO-ORA, Nigeria (AFP) — Igbo-Ora, a sleepy farming community in southwest Nigeria, welcomes visitors with a sign proclaiming "The Land of Twins".

"There is hardly a family here without a set of twins," said community leader Olayide Akinyemi, a 71-year-old father of 12, as he settled a dispute between two neighbours.

"My father had 10 sets, while I had three sets. But only one set, a male and a female, survived," he said.

The town's high incidence of twins has baffled fertility experts -- underscoring a more regional twin trend and an array of elaborate African rituals around them.

The rate of identical twins is pretty steady throughout the world at about 0.5 percent of all births, according to a 1995 study by Belgian researcher Fernand Leroy, who has worked extensively on twins.

But West Africa bucks that trend, particularly with a much higher incidence of fraternal, or non-identical twins than in Europe or Japan. That is especially true, experts say, amongst Nigeria's Yoruba community which is largely concentrated in the southwestern part of the country where Igbo-Ora is located.

Overall, almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, the Belgian study said, compared with just around 1.2 percent for Western Europe and 0.8 percent for Japan -- although fertility drugs in the developed world are changing those figures.

Yam consumption may be one explanation for Africa's largesse, some West Africans and Western experts believe. Yams contain a natural hormone phytoestrogen which may stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg from each side.

For their part, Igbo-Ora's residents appear nonplussed about their twin phenomenon.

Some like Akinyemi support the yam theory -- and point specifically to the reputedly high oestrogen content of agida, the local name for yam tubers.

"We eat a lot of okro leaf or Ilasa soup. We also consume a lot of agida. This diet influences multiple births," he said.

Others are not so sure.

"The real cause of the phenomenon has not been medically found," said Akin Odukogbe, a senior consultant gynaecologist with the University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, the nearest big town.

"But people attribute the development to diet," he continued, adding that studies have shown that yam can make women produce more than one egg which can be fertilised.

Chief nursing officer at the hospital Muyibi Yomi, who records a monthly average of five twins for every 100 births, puts it all down to genetics.

"If a family has a history of multiple births, this will continue from generation to generation," she said.

That should be good news for Yorubaland, where twins are regarded as a special gift from God and bearers of good luck, Akinyemi said.

"Twins are treated with affection, love and respect. Their birth is a good omen," he said.

But while many African cultures see twins as blessed, they often believe twins also have divine powers and the ability to harm those who cause them displeasure.

In pre-colonial times some communities used to kill twins and occasionally their mothers, believing a double birth was an evil portent and that the mother must have been with two men to bear two children at once. A Scottish missionary is credited with ending this practice.

In Yorubaland and indeed in large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa, twins are also believed to possess one soul between them. This belief accounts for a whole series of distinctive, and in some cases macabre rituals that are often country specific.

If one twin dies in a Yoruba family, the parents order a wooden figure called an "ibeji" to be carved, to take the place of the dead twin. The half soul of the deceased twin is thought to live on in the ibeji figure -- which is clothed, "fed" and carried by a mother exactly in the same way as the living twin.

When living twins reach maturity they take responsibility for the ibejis' care.

Meanwhile, a twin who dies in Malawi is buried with a piece of clothing belonging to the surviving sibling.

But when a twin dies in South Africa, the surviving twin is made to lie face down on his sibling's coffin the night before the burial, to mourn his death and say goodbye properly.

Another variant has the surviving twin being made to lie face up in the freshly dug grave the day before his sibling is buried. If not, communities fear the surviving twin will pine so much for his dead sibling that he will also die.

Amongst the Yoruba -- one of Nigeria's dominant ethnic groups who are also present in Benin, Ghana and Togo -- a mother who loses both twins will take part periodically in ritual ceremonies where she dances with both ibeji figures, either one in each hand, or both tucked into her shirt.

Anthropologists say the elaborate rituals surrounding twins go back to the days when perinatal mortality was very high for twins -- the increased chances of premature delivery compounding the problem of inadequate healthcare in traditional societies.

The rituals were destined to help communities come to terms with the loss of the babies.



Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i_IsZNBK7Hf1B4VhfWtFxg7G2svw

wowwwwwwww

Last one, bear with me:

BBC World


THE LAND OF TWINS



It's a curious, but little-known fact that the rate of twin births in West Africa is about four times higher than in the rest of the world. The centre of this twin zone is Igbo-Ora, a sleepy southwest town in Nigeria.

More twins are born here than anywhere else on earth, but nobody is quite sure why this town should be more twin prone than any other. Outlook reports from the 'twin town' with a difference.

Seeing Double In Igbo-Ora
On the road going into the town of Igbo-Ora, there's a large stone plinth, which proudly welcomes visitors to 'the land of twins'. Here there are few households who do not have at least one set of twins.

Nigeria is the most highly populated nation in the world with an estimated 110 million people and population experts say that the country, particularly the southwest, has the world's highest twinning rate.

Whilst recent accurate figures do not exist, a study conducted by a British gynaecologist, Patrick Nylander, between 1972 and 1982 recorded an average of 45 to 50 sets of twins per 1000 live births in the southwest.

In the predominantly rural community of Igbo-Ora, multiple births are celebrated and have, over the generations, been regarded as special gifts from God. Twins are a blessing, with many pregnant women wishing for multiple births.

'Whilst twins could be considered the result of providence, other local people attribute the predominance of twins to tradition. Meanwhile, others believe it to be diet.'

Yam Births
Central to the Yoruba people's diet is the cassava, a plant with a tuber root, which can be eaten in addition to the leaves and flowers.

Research into multiple births carried out at Lagos's University Teaching Hospital has suggested that a high level of a chemical found in the Yoruba women and the peelings of the tuber could account for the high level of multiple births.

A consultant gynaecologist at the hospital explains:

'These substances are usually linked to the release of more than one egg, which usually leads to twin pregnancies. That means that there is possibly an environmental factor that encourages the high level of this chemical substance.'

The doctor, who has witnessed many multiple births at the run-down hospital, continues by linking the staple diet of the women to the prevalence of the chemical:

'Numerous works has shown that the tuber food of the Yoruba women, especially the peelings, contains a very large amount of these chemical substances. These women have a disproportionately large amount of these chemicals in their system and this encourages the release of more than one egg. There is enough reason to believe in this theory.'

So, could it be that eating tuber peelings leads to multiple births? The International Institute of Tropical Agricultural is uncertain.

Following research into the reputed high oestrogen content of a yam like vegetable called agida, Robert Asiedu is sceptical of the tuber link. Citing the specific cultivation of yams in regions of Asia for their contraceptive qualities, in an article for Science In Africa magazine, he commented:

'Nobody has provided any scientific explanation or evidence that could prove that yam consumption can cause multiple births.'

A Special Breed
Igbo-Ora is not a wealthy town, many families rely on farming for their income and resources are scarce.

Bringing up large numbers of children can be a struggle, but in many families the arrival of twins continues to be warmly welcomed as one townsman explains:

'Being a father of twins is a joy. It is a sort of honour, because you know they are a special breed from God.'




Igbo –Ora Facts

Igbo-Ora is a town in south-western Nigeria 80 kilometres north of the former capital, Lagos.

It has a population of approximately 60 000 people.



Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/highlights/010607_twins.shtml

Having twins is somtin u heredit,M a proud mother of twins,multiple birth runs in my family,we have lots of Taiwo's n kenny's.....if dey dnt av twins in ur family,u may posibly nt av one....plus Ivf results in multiple births

Having twins is somtin u heredit,M a proud mother of twins n I hate yam..I only take d fried one mayb once in a year,so if eatin yam is required fr multiple birth,I doubt dat...multiple birth runs in my family,we have lots of Taiwo's n kenny's.....if dey dnt av twins in ur family,u may posibly nt av one....plus Ivf results in multiple births

*heading to Igbo-Ora*

60000 people in a village

hi sis, ur observation is quite right, but on d contrary, it s d husband who needs the pounded yam more cos he s d one who ll donate d sperm for fertilization... And it has been found that yam generally contains steroids that stimulate and potentiate the testosterone of males... So give ur husby a lot of pounded yam nd u can be so sure of either male child as they have tendency to donate the Y chromosome resonsible for male sex child or twins... Wish u d best of luck... Just get any yoruba yam... Rich in steroids... And prepare more of it in pounding form... Iyan and efo sure pass

Wild yam

Why did everybody like twins tho?

@OP Dioscorea Rutundata is what you are asking for. Good luck to you. AS for details, it stimulates some hormones like that. Can't say more.

Odunharry:
No need sweerie,it in ma blood..remember I'm a twin

stop being foolling people na God dey give twins or triplet no be any leaf

Most importantly, a man needs to get deep penetration during Coitus and during insemination while in orgasm.

I guess you know the position to achieving this - the female's legs has to be raised on missionary position.

I will say no more but adding that the nutritional content that's responsible for birthing twin is in the yam fibre as it is maintain only when roasted. So roasted yam is 100% advisable too. All things working together, don't forget that.
Happy pounding

duality: @OP Dioscorea Rutundata is what you are asking for. Good luck to you. AS for details, it stimulates some hormones like that. Can't say more.

Na wa. Why Oyinbo go take our yam come name am wetin locals no fit pronounce. . How about using the local name.

I tink the yam is called esuruI tink the yam is called esuruI tink the yam is called esuru

amiskurie: MIX ISI-EWU WITH OGBOLO AND ADD SOME GAMALE 20

are u sending a message to TONTO DIKE?

Bright2: Go to the market ,buy plantain that is conjoin though the price is different from others,eat it as it does thesame thing too.

Mehn! those conjoined things fit enter belle oo, all those plantain,cocoyam,yam,potato or anything at all wey conjoin they are capable of duplicating the foetus. my thoughts exactly[color=#000000][/color]

O boy I need to start buying yams from ekiti o anytime am plying Abuja-Lagos[sub][/sub]


I NEED TO BE CALLED MAMA EJIMA(TWO BOYS).I need not girls ooo.