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Want to get pregnant? Just Relax |
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Written by Glenn Rosenberg
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Monday, 19 October 2009 |
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Old-fashioned, common-sense advice to just relax may actually work to help some women get pregnant, doctors reported on Monday.
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 gynecologists 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 center 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 percent 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 percent of the women getting pregnant.
But for
women who failed the first time and were having a second try, 52
percent who took part in the mind/body program became pregnant,
compared to only 20 percent 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
percent had tried some kind of alternative medicine, mostly acupuncture
or herbs, but they were not any more likely to achieve pregnancy.
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