LEARN INSURANCE

Doctors come in all shapes and sizes . This is just as well, as patients come in different flavours as well, and in the best of all worlds, each patient will find the doctor with whom they can work best with.

This is why doctors prescribe all kinds of therapy - medicines; injections; vaccines; acupuncture; supplements; diets; and surgery. However, there are 3 kinds of therapy which all doctors should prescribe routinely, which they often forget to do !

1. Information Therapy. This should be number one ! The word doctor is derived from the word " docere" - which means to teach. Educating patients is critically important, both for the doctor and the patient, so that they both have realistic expectations of what each expects; and what the likely outcome is going to be. There are many tools available for educating patients - and this can be done online; before , during and after the visit; and by assistants as well.

2. Humour Therapy. Humour is one of the most effective coping mechanisms available and a regular dose can help all of us - patients, as well as doctors ! Good doctors try to make the patient feel comfortable and at ease and humour can be a very useful tool in doing so. It's a good idea to prescribe Laughter Therapy ! For example, I tell all my infertile couples to watch the movie, Maybe Baby. This is not an educational film - it's a romantic comedy about an infertile couple trying to have a baby. It stars Mr Bean - and most patients find watching the movie helps them cope better with their infertility !

3. Biblio Therapy. Many patients - especially those with chronic illnesses - feel cut off and isolated from the rest of the world. It's hard for them to find someone who understands what they are going through - and this adds to their unhappiness and stress. Reading books about other patients who have dealt with a similar problem can be very powerful medicine ! It helps them to realise that others have "been there and done that" - and this can inspire them to fight back !

These are common sense measures, so why does a doctor have to "prescribe " these ? For one, when a doctor advises a patient to do something, he is much more likely to do it. Even more importantly, it helps the patient to realise that the doctor is an empathetic human being, who has his best interests at heart - he's not just a technician. And finally, prescribing these will help the doctor to become a better doctor , as he learns to see things from his patient's point of view - and become a better human being !

I just got this email from one of my patients." How many unsuccessful IVF attempts does a person like me go through before AMH levels get impacted and early menopause sets in?

This is a very common concern many IVF patients have. They feel that pumping their body full of hormones in each IVF cycle is bound to have a deleterious effect on their body - no matter what the medical studies show. This is a very real fear , which is often not articulated.

" IVF will never cause you to have an early menopause. Let's look at some basic reproductive biology to understand why this is true. Every month , about 40 ovarian follicles start growing. This is called follicular recruitment, and occurs as a result of the production of FSH ( follicle stimulating hormone) . Of these, only one matures . This is why most women normally have just one baby at one time ( unlike rabbits, who have a litter, because many of their eggs mature simultaneously every month). What happens to the others ? They naturally undergo a process of atresia every month. What this means is that about 39 follicles "die" every month, whether or not you do ICSI. In each IVF cycle, we are only rescuing the follicles which would have died anyway, so you will not run out of eggs any sooner as a result of doing IVF ! This is why the risk of ovarian cancer is also not increased as a result of using these drugs. All these superovulation drugs are natural hormones - we are just mimicking the natural process, but improving its efficiency by growing many eggs at one time ! Now it is true that some infertile women have poor ovarian reserve. These women will have an early menopause because of their impaired ovarian reserve. Now, many of them will blame their IVF cycles for this - but the fact is that they would have had an early menopause, whether or not they had done IVF ! "