One in seven women seeks medical help to aid conception.
Inevitably, given this demand and the low success rates of conventional
treatments for infertility alternative practitioners have not been slow to offer
therapies that they claim will increase fertility.
Dr. Elizabeth Muir, a clinical psychologist who has specialized in treating
infertility for seven years, uses hypnotherapy to help couples for whom there is
no apparent medical reason why they should not have a child.
Muir believes that the psychological issues surrounding pregnancy are not
sufficiently well addressed for many women with fertility problems, and she
claims a success rate of 45 per cent for her clients.
"Hypnotherapy works on the premise that the conscious and subconscious minds may
be at odds with each other," she says. "I believe that while a woman might
consciously want a baby, her subconscious may be stopping her from getting
pregnant. Most women I see have
psychosomatic infertility related to conflicts or unresolved issues about having
a baby. A combination of counseling
and hypnotherapy can remove these problems."
Muir explains that hypnosis affects the hypothalamus, the neural center at the
base of the brain linked to the pituitary gland and controls the flow of
hormones in the body. The
hypothalamus is sensitive to stress and acts as a bridge between the emotional
and physical, turning emotional messages into physical responses that affect
hormone levels.
A study by John Gruzelier, Professor of Psychology at Imperial College School of
Medicine, revealed that self-hypnosis could strengthen the immune system by 48
per cent in six weeks. Muir’s
theory is also supported in studies by Dr. Alice Domar, director of the Beth
Israel Deaconess Behavioral Medicine Program for Infertility in Boston, who
examined the relationship between stress and infertility. Her studies documented
the success of her mind/body fertility program, which taught people how to relax
and reduce tension.
In the first study, published in 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical
Women’s Association, 42 percent of the 132 infertile women in the program
conceived within six months of completing it.
In the second study, published in 2000 in the journal Fertility and
Sterility, 55 percent of the previously infertile women who met regularly in a
mind-body program conceived, compared with 20 percent of the control group, who
used no mind-body techniques and did not attend meetings.
Niravi Payne, a psychotherapist and pioneer of mind-body fertility therapy in
America, believes that stress is only one of the factors that can prevent
conception. "Our endocrine, immune and nervous systems are all intimately
connected and influenced by every thought we think and every emotion we feel,"
she says. "When something
significant happens in our lives, the emotionally charged experience gets stored
in our brain. Memories and
experiences are also simultaneously stored biochemically and electromagnetically
in various organ systems. Negative
emotional experiences can throw off the finely tuned hormonal balance necessary
for ovulation and sperm production"
After four years of infertility, the actress Alex Kingston had a child after
having IVF treatment. During the
treatment, Kingston also worked with Payne. "One of my sisters is physically and
mentally handicapped and I realized that I was holding on to a lot of fear about
that," says Kingston. "With Niravi, I was able to release a huge amount of stuff
I’d been holding on to without realizing it."
March 05, 2002, Reported On The Times Newspapers (TimesOnLine.com) Web Site