scientific evidence
History
Most ancient healing practices, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, emphasise the links between the mind and the body. This was also the case in the West until the mid 19th Century.
During the first half of the 19th Century advances in medical instruments (beginning with the stethoscope in 1816) provided greater understanding of workings of the body ‘below the surface’ leading to creating medicines (such as penicillin in 1928) for illnesses.
This intense period of learning elevated the body to be the focus in the discipline of medicine where it has remained being so at the expense of the mind.
There is now a wealth of scientific research demonstrating how your mind affects your body and how this can be utilised to our benefit and to improve your fertility.
YOUR MIND AFFECTS YOUR BODY
Harvard psychologist Prof Ellen Lange has spent her entire career investigating the power of our mind.
“Everybody knows in some way that our minds affect our physical being, but I don’t think people are aware of just how profound the effect actually is,” she says.
Prof. Langer’s research started over 30 years ago in 1979 when she carried out a ground-breaking experiment which called ‘Counter Clockwise’. She wanted to know whether recreating a state of mind from 20 years earlier would make any changes in the bodies of participants.
She did this by having the volunteers move into a house that re-created the environment of 20 years earlier, from decor, news stories on the TV and radio and their topic of discussions. The profound and positive differences were truly amazing. In 2010 the BBC produced a reality TV show replicating this study with older celebrities. Again, the differences were profound. You can see Dickie Bird’s reviewing his results the video on the left.
IVF & HYPNOSIS RESEARCH
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SUCCESS WITHOUT HYPNOSIS
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SUCCESS WITH HYPNOSIS
A study presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Berlin in July of 2004, demonstrated how hypnosis can improve fertility and effectively double the success of IVF treatments. The study of 185 women found that 28% of the women who were hypnotised for the embryo transfer of their IVF treatment became pregnant, compared to 14% of the women in the control group.
Your mind affects your fertility
Stress can affect your ability to get pregnant on multiple levels, including affecting a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus helps regulate hormone levels including FSH and LH involved in conception. The hypothalamus controls the pituitary and adrenal responses which produce and regulate the level of stress hormones in your body.
The pituitary regulates both how much of a hormone is made and how much is released in the body. Changes to it’s response can have dramatic affect on the delicate cocktail of hormones necessary for ovulation, fertilisation, fallopian tube functioning and even successful implantation of the egg.
- A study in Fertility Sterility (1998, vol. 69) suggests that because mind/body programs are effective for reducing negative emotions that may impair IVF success, IVF patients should be offered this type of program.
- Use of stress reducing therapies early in the process increase IVF success rates (in this study from 20% to 52%). Fertility and Sterility, 2011
“Hypnotherapy reduces stress and increases confidence, instilling a sense of control in the client, which in turn enables her to maximise chances of conceiving naturally and/or increase the success of medical assistance.”
ELIZABETH MUIR
CLINICAL PHSYCHOLOGIST
