June 18, 2011

In the delicate debate about whether or not stress impacts the ability of women to conceive, a new study published June 1 in Fertility and Sterility, a publication of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, concludes that women who participate in a mind/body program for stress reduction while undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment have a significantly higher pregnancy rate than those who do not.

“The intersection of stress and fertility is a controversial one, but we do know that stress can reduce the probability of conception,” said principal investigator Alice Domar, Ph.D, OB/GYN, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Executive Director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health at Boston IVF, in a press release from BIDMC.

According to the National Institutes of Health NCCAM Mind-Body Backgrounder, mind-body medicine typically focuses on intervention strategies that are thought to promote health by focusing on the interactions among brain, mind, body and behavior. These therapies may include relaxation, visual imagery, meditation, group support, yoga, tai chi and chi gong, among others.

The study recruited 143 women who were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Half attended a ten-week mind-body program that employed thought restructuring, social support and relaxation training. The other half did not.

During the second round of IVF treatment, after 76% of the mind-body group had completed five of the ten weeks of training, results for the two groups diverged with a pregnancy rate of 52% for the mind-body group versus 20% for the untrained group.

“By that point, they had acquired some real life skills to deal with their stress,” said Domar in the release. “And that’s when we saw the significant increase in pregnancy rates.”

In her blog at www.domarcenter.com/blog, Domar writes, “In terms of implications for patient care, if I were about to embark on any infertility treatment, especially one as intensive as IVF, I would do everything in my power to learn ways to lower my stress level.”

Source: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Domar Center for Mind/Body Health

Study: Domar AD, et al. “Impact of a group mind/body intervention on pregnancy rates in IVF patients.” Fertility and Sterility, 2011 Jun;95(7):2269-73.

Dave Gorczynski is president of SPARK, a non-profit organization that has provided free energy work sessions and workshops across New York City since 2002. He writes a regular column about energy work and meditation for the Compact News in New York City's Chinatown. E-mail him at dave@sparkenergy.org.