Treatments at Ensana’s Sovata Health Spa Hotel in Romania are using healing mud and water from neighbouring Bear Lake to offer a 10-day programme designed to help women conceive. Bear Lake is said to contain numerous naturally occurring substances to boost fertility.

The fertility treatments, developed by the hotel’s on-site gynecologist Dr Vasilescu George, a former IVF doctor, use a combination of “mud tampons”, salt water vaginal irrigation using highly concentrated salt water from Bear Lake, salt water baths, external mud packs and massage to treat patients. A ten-day programme costs €800. Dr George has tracked data from 1,904 patients he treated over a six-year period from 2013-2019, and says 508 women – or 30.9% – conceived after the treatment.

“The fertile properties of Bear Lake have been rumoured for decades here, but until now, no one has been able to prove them,” says Dr George. “We’re only at the beginning of our research, but we are enormously encouraged by what we have found and we believe that our treatments offer a credible, affordable and natural alternative for women seeking fertility treatment.”

The treatments offered by Dr. Vasilescu, who studied infertility treatments both in France and the US, fuse medical knowledge with an understanding of the unique, natural and historic healing properties of the lake.

The company reports that in 2011, tests on the mud and waters from Bear Lake analysed by a lab in Budapest revealed that it contained human-like estrogen and progesterone hormones, and that subsequent blood tests on patients treated using the lake’s natural resources revealed a correlating increase not only in their estrogen and progesterone levels, but also in their levels of FSH – the human egg growth hormone. The high levels of salt in the lake – which has been nicknamed the ‘Transylvanian Dead Sea’ – are also said to aid fertility by providing an anti-inflammatory effect that helps enlarge fallopian tubes.

All patients who visit the team at Sovata Ensana Health Spa Hotel in Sovata first have a consultation with a doctor before being prescribed a course of treatment. “Mud tampons” are key to the treatment. The mud taken from Bear Lake is mixed and heated in a special device in order to obtain a sterile cream, then a small amount is inserted and shaped into a small cotton bag. This ‘mud tampon’ is then introduced into the vagina and it ensures a slow, gradual release of the mud in contact with the walls of the vagina.

The company says that interest in the treatment is beginning to surge as a trend for natural health treatments becomes more popular, and that the treatment is gaining traction outside of Romania.

The timing for this treatment may be spot-on; the Global Wellness Summit has just named ‘The Fertility Boom’ as one of its ten wellness trends for 2020. “Fertility is no longer a taboo topic hushed about in doctor’s offices,” the report says. “The last few years saw incredible progress in this space on multiple fronts.” The GWS predicts that new ways of addressing fertility will have a meaningful impact on the $4.5 trillion global wellness industry, saying: “Fertility has reached a crisis point across the globe”.