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Source: ONE News
Old-fashioned, common-sense advice to just relax may actually
work to help some women get pregnant, doctors reported.
For years women seeking to get pregnant have been advised by
friends and family to stop stressing about it - an idea that not
all obstetricians and gynaecologists have embraced.
But research presented at a meeting of the American Society for
Reproductive Medicine in Atlanta suggests there may be something to
it.
Alice Domar, who runs a fertility centre in Boston and also works
at Harvard Medical School, found that women who took part in a
stress management program while having a second round of assisted
fertility treatment had a 160% greater pregnancy rate than women
getting IVF alone.
"Reproductive health experts have long wondered about the impact
that stress may have on fertility, thus impeding a woman's ability
to conceive," Domar said in a statement.
"This study shows that stress management may improve pregnancy
rates, minimizing the stress of fertility management itself,
improving the success rates of IVF procedures, and ultimately,
helping to alleviate the emotional burden for women who are facing
challenges trying to conceive."
She and colleagues randomly assigned 97 patients at the clinic to
take part in a 10-session mind/body program while undergoing
in-vitro fertilization treatments.
The program had no effect on how many women conceived during the
first try, Domar told the meeting, with 43% of the women getting
pregnant.
But for women who failed the first time and were having a second
try, 52% who took part in the mind/body program became pregnant,
compared to only 20% of those who did not.
"It's clear based on this carefully designed study, that a holistic
approach to infertility care leads to better outcomes for
patients," said Dr R Dale McClure, president of the American
Society for Reproductive Medicine.
But a second study found that while complementary and alternative
medical therapy was popular among couples getting infertility
treatments, it did not make women any more likely to get
pregnant.
A team at the University of California, San Francisco questioned
431 couples undergoing infertility therapy and found that 28% had
tried some kind of alternative medicine, mostly acupuncture or
herbs, but they were not any more likely to achieve pregnancy.
