At the end of 20 weeks, their hormone levels were measured again. The result: every woman who received the therapy had an increase in estrogen and progesterone levels, and 86 percent resumed ovulating. In the control group, only 29 percent had a rise in hormone levels, and only 14 percent resumed ovulating -- a step necessary for any natural conception to occur. In a small subset of the women, there was also a decrease in cortisol levels.
"We believe that [the therapy] did work to restore reproductive functions in these women, and it helped reduce both the metabolic imbalances and the correlating stress responses," says Berga.
In addition, she says, should the women get pregnant, having their stress levels under control could help reduce the risk of early delivery, poor fetal brain development, or postpartum depression.
Colette Bouchez is an award winning medical journalist with more than twenty years experience. She is the former medical writer for the New York Daily News, and the top selling author of The V Zone, co-author of Getting Pregnant, Your Perfectly Pampered Pregnancy and upcoming book, Your Perfectly Pampered Menopause. Currently a daily medical correspondent for HealthDay News Service/The New York Times Syndicate, and WebMD, her popular consumer health articles appear daily online, as well as in newspapers nationwide and in Europe and Japan. She is a regular contributor to USAToday.com, ABCNews.com, MSNBC.com and more than two dozen radio and television news stations nationwide. She lives in New York City.
Copyright © Colette Bouchez. Permission to republish granted to Pregnancy.org, LLC.
Comments
stress and infertility