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The Facts to Relax
How to Cope with the Stress of Infertility
By Gwen Morrison
"In my work with fertility patients using a combination of support and mind/body skill instruction, patients virtually uniformly report an increased calm, a reduction of physical stress symptoms, greater ease tolerating procedures and an overall brighter mood," says Blitzer. "More recently, I have become excited about the number of pregnancies I've been observing. Although it is impossible to establish whether or to what extent mind/body stress reduction techniques have contributed to this outcome, I suspect they have had a positive impact in many instances."
Dr. Traci Kurtzer, an obstetrician and gynecologist from Evanston, Ill., agrees. "The stress hormone, cortisol, may play a role in infertility," she says. "Think about it from a survival standpoint in that our bodies would want to have a way to prevent us from getting pregnant in situations where we are under severe duress."
Dr. Kurtzer sites one study that has shown higher fertility rates in a group of infertile women who participated in daily meditation (in addition to their routine fertility treatments) compared to a control group of infertile women who underwent fertility treatments alone.
More and more studies are being done to evaluate the link between stress – both psychological and physical – and amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), reproductive dysfunction and lower implantation rates in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF). In recent years, the National Institutes of Health have provided funding to continue with research into the connection between stress and fertility.
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