If you are trying to get pregnant through IVF, then you must be receiving a lot of suggestions from people close to you. You get suggestions about lifestyle changes, changes in your diet and much more. You will definitely get to hear about the Mediterranean diet in that list. This is one of the best diets that can ensure a healthy pregnancy.

There are so many studies conducted on the right diet for women to achieve a healthy pregnancy. A diet which is rich in vegetables, fruits, high fibre, whole grains and fish is good and the Mediterranean diet has just what a woman requires.

What is the Mediterranean diet?
The Mediterranean diet includes eating fresh fruits and vegetables. It also includes good fat, proteins and carbohydrates. When you are opting for IVF treatment, your overall lifestyle plays an important role such as the food you consume. You need to add more proteins to your diet as that can help in the production of eggs. You need to consume vegetable protein and not just animal protein.

How can the Mediterranean diet influence the results of an IVF?

Your body should be able to absorb the nutrients from the food that you eat. This will help in the production of quality sperm, egg and hormones. So, the Mediterranean diet can help you with that.
The Mediterranean diet helps manage blood sugar levels. Most women crave sweets or experience mood swings caused by hormones good food can help control these. When you are able to manage your blood sugar with the help of this diet, then you will be able to produce good quality or healthy eggs.
You will have to make sure that the food you are eating is protecting the cells from radical damage. When the cells in the body are damaged, then they will impact the quality of the sperm and egg produced. The Mediterranean diet is high in antioxidants that protect the cells.
The Mediterranean diet contains good fats. Fats from fish are very good as they boost the cell membranes. Inflammation is also prevented with the help of this good fat.
Apart from that, you will also find the Mediterranean diet useful in reducing obesity, heart diseases and diabetes.
Being overweight can also be one of the reasons for not getting pregnant. This diet will help you maintain a good weight. People with sleeping disorders are also able to overcome the problem. So, overall the Mediterranean diet is the best diet for maintaining overall health. Overall good health will guarantee a good and healthy pregnancy. 

Mediterranean Diet - How Can It Influence The Results After IVF?

Factors that determine the success of your IVF procedure

IVF or In Vitro Fertilization is a process wherein an egg is fertilized by a sperm in a laboratory dish to form the embryo (baby's first cell) which after growth in artificial medium in the lab is transferred into the uterus of women, In general, a blood sample is collected to determine whether you're pregnant or not about 10-14 days after the eggs are retrieved.

Coming to the success of the procedure, a number of factors are at play and these are:

The age at which you get pregnant

A factor that plays a role in influencing your chances of experiencing success in your IVF procedure is the age at which you opt for this procedure. The lower your age, the chances that you may get pregnant and deliver a healthy child using your own eggs witness an increase. On the other hand, if you're aged 41 and above, or your egg reserve is very low donor eggs are the most preferred option as they help to increase your prospects of meeting a success.

Lifestyle habits

Certain lifestyle factors can significantly affect your prospects of getting pregnant through this route. Smoking can reduce your prospect of success using this procedure by about 50%. It can cause you to have lesser number of eggs retrieved during the procedure while increasing instances of miscarriages. Likewise, obesity, alcohol use, consumption of excessive caffeine and drugs can adversely affect your chances of getting pregnant using IVF.

Cause of Infertility

If your supply of eggs is normal, success rate using IVF is high. Women who suffer from the problem of endometriosis experience lesser chances of getting pregnant than women who have unexplained fertility.

Reproductive history

IVF success rate chances are higher if you've delivered a baby previously using IVF.

Embryo status

Embryos that are better developed with good grade stand a higher chance of experiencing success than less developed embryos. More importantly, not every embryo is able to survive the development process.



What are the factors that determine the success of your IVF procedure?

When we talk about infertility attention usually falls on treatment for women. However, infertility can affect men as well. The condition of infertility, can be described as the inability to become pregnant for a period of 1 year despite having unprotected, well-timed sexual intercourse. A low sperm count is one of the primary reasons for infertility in men.

Typically there should be fifteen million sperm per milliliter of semen. Low sperm count refers to the ejaculation of less than a normal amount of sperm in semen. This can also be termed as oligospermia. A complete absence of sperm in semen is known as azoospermia. Low sperm count does not mean that you cannot impregnate your partner but it reduces the chance of a successful conception. Thus, one of the most common ways to treat infertility caused by low sperm count is IVF.

IVF involves harvesting eggs from the woman s uterus and sperm from the male partner and combining them in a laboratory to form a zygote. When IVF is used to treat male infertility, a semen analysis is the first step. This helps determine the patient s sperm count, sperm motility, volume, pH levels, white blood cell levels etc.
The ejaculated semen is then processed so as to separate the sperm cells from the plasma. In this process sperm cells with higher motility are identified and segregated. These cells have a higher chance of fertilizing the egg.
Sperm cells are then injected into the harvested egg. Some techniques may require the injection of 50,000 or more sperm cells while others such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) can be effective with a single sperm cell. Once the egg is fertilized, it is allowed to develop for a few days in the laboratory. 
Two or three embryos are then selected to be reintroduced into the woman s uterus with the help of a catheter. The remaining fertilized embryos are preserved in an embryo bank in case the pregnancy is not successful. If these need to be used later, the woman does not have to go through the initial stages of IVF treatment to stimulate the follicles and harvest eggs from the ovaries.
When it comes to IVF, the success rates are very high. However, one of the most common side effects is the birth of twins or triplets. This is because multiple embryos are inserted into the uterus. The number of babies born then depends on the number of embryos that are implanted successfully.

Declining Sperm Count - How IVF Can Help Deal With It?

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection i.e. ICSI is different from conventional IVF i.e. In Vitro Fertilization because a single sperm is selected by the embryologist to be injected by a needle into the egg rather than a dish with many sperms placed near the egg so that the fastest swimming sperm enters it. Once the sperm is injected directly into the egg, it fertilizes, after which the embryo is transferred into the womb or uterus. 

Your doctor might recommend ICSI treatment for you if you have an extremely low sperm count resulting in infertility or other medical sperm conditions such as poor motility or poor morphology. It may also be suggested if prior attempts at IVF procedures have failed in fertilizing the egg or the fertilization rate is extremely low. You must also consider ICSI treatment if you resort to embryo testing or if the sperm needs to be collected from the epididymis or testicles surgically. 

However, you must keep in mind that if your partner has a genetic problem resulting in low sperm count, it could be passed on to your child, if you decide to use your husband's sperm for this process.

Success Rates of ICSI:
The success rate of ICSI treatment depends on your age and your fertility problem. Your eggs are healthier when you are young and as you age, chances are that they will become less healthy.
1. 35 per cent if you are under 35 years of age
2. 29 per cent if you are between 35 to 37 years of age
3. 21 per cent if you are between 38 to 39 years of age
4. 14 per cent if you are between 40 to 42 years of age
5. 6 per cent if you are between 43 to 44 years of age
6. 5 per cent if you are above 44 years of age

Advantages of ICSI Treatment:
Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection gives you a chance to conceive a child genetically when most other options are exhausted. Males may be unable to ejaculate on the day the eggs are collected due to anxiety. ICSI proves to be advantageous because sperm may also be surgically extracted for this process. It is extremely helpful for those couples who suffer from unexplained infertility. However, one of the most important factors is that ICSI treatment does not affect your child's physical or mental health.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)

The fallopian tubes are not mere passages for the egg to travel from the ovaries to the uterus. It is here that conception occurs and hence healthy fallopian tubes are essential for the fertilization of an egg. 

Damaged fallopian tubes are the most common cause of infertility. This damage can fall under three categories. 

 Blocked fallopian tubes
 One blocked and one open fallopian tube
 Tubal scarring

The third is usually an effect of pelvic infections or natural healing after a pelvic surgery. Sadly, in most cases, this condition is discovered only after infertility has been diagnosed. Other causes of fallopian tubal scarring include:

 Stds such as chlamydia trachomatis and neisseria gonorrhea
 Adhesions caused by ruptured ovarian cysts
 Appendicitis
 Peritonitis
 A history of ectopic pregnancies

Fallopian tubal scarring has no recognizable symptoms. Chronic pelvic pain is the only known symptom of this damage and that too can be seen only in severe cases of tubal scarring. On diagnosing infertility, your doctor will perform one of these tests to determine the condition of your fallopian tubes.

 Hysterosalpingogram: this is a type of x-ray. Your doctor will open the vagina with a speculum and inject a liquid into the uterus with the help of a catheter. If the liquid does not pass through the fallopian tubes, it is said to be blocked. This however, does not say much about tubal scarring.
 Laparoscopy: a small incision is made below the belly button and a slim, flexible tube with a camera is passed through the incision. This gives your doctor a clear view of the condition of your fallopian tubes. A laparoscopy can also be used to rule out other causes of infertility such as endometriosis or blocked fallopian tubes. 

Treatment for infertility caused by tubal scarring is of two types:

 Surgery: this is suggested in cases where tubal scarring is minimal. Depending on the intensity and placement of scar tissue, your doctor may decide to perform one of many types of surgeries. He may choose to remove the scarred section of the fallopian tube, create a new opening (in case of blockages) or rebuild the damaged edges of the fallopian tubes.
 In vitro fertilization (ivf): women with badly scarred fallopian tubes usually have poor chances of conceiving naturally. Hence, ivf is the preferred treatment route. However, your doctor may still advise you to undergo surgery and remove the damaged tubes prior to ivf to prevent the tubes from filling with fluid.

Tubal Scarring and Infertility

There is nothing more stressful to a patient and a caring gynaecologist than to face repeated IVF failure or recurrent pregnancy loss following IVF. So to advice couples who have failed one or more attempts, to keep on trying over and over and over; is not an easy job. Here, one can find solution in Ayurvedic treatment. Ayurveda, through its medicines, diet & lifestyle modifications and panchakarma raises a new hope after IVF failure. Ayurvedic treatment enhances success rate of Artificial Reproductive Techniques (IUI, IVF, ICSI-ET) or increases chance of natural conception as per cause of infertility.

What is Infertility?

Infertility is Inability to conceive even after one year of unprotected coitus or inability to carry pregnancy till full term. There are many causes of infertility; such as tubal block, PID, Endometriosis, PCOD in women and low sperm count, low sperm motility in men. When there is severe tubal disease, severe egg factors, failed IUI treatments, severe male factors, unexplained infertility, grade III & IV endometriosis; Test tube baby is suggested.

What is test tube baby? IVF (In-Vitro-Fertilization)?

It is a laboratory procedure in which processed sperm are either placed with oocyte (IVF) or injected into oocyte (ICSI) in a petridish to achieve fertilization. The resultant embryos are transferred into woman's uterus for implantation.

What are causes of IVF failure?

To work out on IVF failures, we should focus on causes of failure.
One of the most common causes of IVF failure is Abnormal Embryo. Abnormal embryo can be formed due to abnormal egg (oocyte) or abnormal sperm or if both are abnormal.
Another common cause is Implantation failure. Endometrium preparation and its receptivity are more important for implantation of an embryo. Endometrium should be 6 mm or more in thickness preferably 8-10 mm. To know details about endometrium preparation, Color Doppler should be done. It has also been observed that when pregnancy is achieved in absence of endometrial and sub-endometrial flow on the day of embryo transfer (ET), more than half of pregnancy will finish as spontaneous miscarriage. 
IVF cycle can be cancelled even before Ovum Pick Up due to Poor Ovarian Response, in which very few or no follicle growth is seen even after fertility injections.
Most neglected but important cause is Pre-treatment STRESS.
HOPE IN AYURVEDA:

According to Ayurveda, four factors are essential for conception; namely seed (oocyte and sperm), soil (reproductive track), season (fertile period) and water (nutrition).
Ayurvedic fertility treatments regularize metabolism of body, purify reproductive organs, maintain hormonal equilibrium, improve endometrium lining & receptivity, increase egg and sperm quality and relieve stress.
Womb preparation treatment of Ayurveda enhances success rate of IUI, IVF, ICSI-ET.

Womb Preparation Treatments:

Ayurvedic medicines
Ayurvedic herbs and medicinal preparations act as natural tonic to male and female reproductive organs. They maintain biological clock of menstruation; hence hormonal imbalance is corrected. They also help in making most potent and healthy sperm & ovum and eventually a healthy pregnancy.

Panchakarma (Detoxification)
Ayurveda can treat infertility by Panchakarma procedures like Basti, Uttarbasti, Vaman, Virechan, Nasya using different Ayurvedic formulations as per cause of infertility & failure of IVF and according to body constitution of patient.

Basti acts on vata predominantly. It increases strength of reproductive organs 
Uttarbasti is an intrauterine instillation of sterile medicated oil or ghee. It acts on endometrial receptors
Vamana and Virechana detox the whole body and improves digestive fire for proper nourishment of reproductive hormones and organs
Yoniprakshalana (Irrigation of vulva and vagina with warm decoction) and Pichudharan (Insertion of a sterile tampoon soaked in medicated ghee or oil in posterior fornix of vagina) are also helpful in infertility
According to Ayurveda; A Cheerful mind forms the basis of pregnancy; so relaxing panchakarma procedures like massage, steam, head massage, Shirodhara are done to reduce stress and its impact on infertility treatments.

Diet:
Like other fertility treatments, Ayurvedic treatment does not depend only on medicines. In fact, it ensures that patient follows a strict diet rules as per Ayurveda and avoids spicy and salty food. The proper food can help to provide proper nutrition to reproductive organs.

Lifestyle modification:
Nowadays infertility has become a part of lifestyle diseases. Ayurvedic Doctor can guide you to modify lifestyle according to your body constitution (Dinacharya) and seasonal variations (Rutucharya). It is always better to avoid cigarette smoking, tobacco and alcohol as they reduce fertility. Exercise is an inevitable part of lifestyle. One should learn exercise, yogasana (e.g. Surya Namaskara, Gomukhasan, Sarvangasan, Pavanmuktasan, Ardhamatsyandrasan, Naukasan, Dhanurasan, Shalabhasan etc.) and Pranayam from an experienced teacher.  

IVF Failure: Hope In Ayurveda!

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