Can acupuncture really help with infertility?

If you have been dealing with infertility, you must have done a ton of research already, read a lot of books and had many visits with fertility doctors. You might have gone through a few rounds of IUI and IVF with no success. You may even say that you have tried everything under the sun but you still can’t get pregnant. But have you really tried everything?

If you and your partner have good test results but you have been trying to conceive for over a year, your doctor may suggest that you have unexplained infertility and recommend that you do a few medicated IUI procedures or IVF. For some reason, offering you fertility drugs seems like the easiest solution to them. Unfortunately, they were educated and trained that way. Natural fertility is not their specialty. But you really may have a chance to conceive without any fertility drugs.

If your fertility journey is in any way similar to ours, I really encourage you to look into acupuncture. First, it is safe if done by a properly licensed practitioner. Secondly, acupuncture treatments increase blood flow to the reproductive organs, improve ovarian and follicular function and balance hormones. And you won’t have any severe side effects which you might have with medications used in infertility treatments. Thirdly, it is way cheaper than IUI and IVF and most healthcare plans cover the cost. And lastly, acupuncture is great for relieving stress, and dealing with infertility is very stressful for your body. So, you really have nothing to lose but you do have something to gain.

Acupuncture is alternative medicine and is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM is more than 2,500 years old, so it must be pretty effective if it has been around for this long, right?

Now let me give you a little bit of backstory on what led me to acupuncture treatments for infertility. Just a few months ago I thought that acupuncture was primarily for pain relief. I have scoliosis and a dislocated vertebrae in my neck, which give me quite a bit of back and neck pain. I heard from one of my co-workers how incredible her acupuncture treatments were and how great she felt after each visit. So, I decided to try acupuncture in addition to my massage therapy and chiropractor.

My first acupuncture visit was a bit weird. The practitioner took a lot of time listening to my pulse and explaining to me how much cold I have in my body and that I needed to work on increasing the heat and balancing the Qi. And I really wanted to just lie down, get the needles in and relax. After 3 visits I had to switch to another practitioner.

My current acupuncturist is a third-generation practitioner of TCM in his family. During my initial conversation, I told him that we had been trying to conceive for a long time and that I had a miscarriage a few months prior to that. He said he could help me with infertility. What?! It was the beginning of May and I was really into meditations and restoring my mind and body connection at that time. In July, after 18 months of trying to get pregnant and 1 miscarriage, we got a BFP!

My treatments included acupuncture needles, ear seeds, and Chinese herbs, I also got some dietary suggestions which included:

• eating more meat, especially deer. Well, deer is not very easy to come by in Vancouver, so the next meat recommendation was lamb. I’ve never eaten so much lamb in my life as I consumed in the last 2-3 months. And what a lucky coincidence – during our honeymoon in Ireland lamb was everywhere! I don’t mind the taste at all, I actually find it pretty yummy. Way better than those Chinese herbs I had to take!
• eating only local and seasonal fruit and vegetables;
• no watermelon, mangoes or pineapple – these are energetically cold fruit;
• less sugar and dairy – which meant cutting back on my chocolate addiction 🙁 ;
• no food straight from the fridge – veggies, fruit or snacks need to be at room temperature;
• no cold drinks or water with ice – I do not like cold drinks in general. I guess my body just knows it is not good for me;
• no ice-cream.

Probably it was not the acupuncture alone that helped me get pregnant, but a combination of things. I was seeing a psychologist, doing meditations, and working non-stop on designing this blog. Starting a blog was a great distraction for me and it kept my mind very busy. It allowed me to have a little time off from the “not pregnant” state of mind. There is a great podcast on the topic of mind and body fertility connection, where Helen Adrienne talks about “creative distraction” and how it sets your mind in a creative mode, which leads you to create a new life within. It totally worked in our case!

Do your own research to find practitioners specializing in infertility treatments. And keep an open mind. Even if you do not get pregnant after a course of acupuncture treatments, you will improve your health and increase your chances to conceive naturally.

If you would like to learn more about acupuncture for infertility, I recommend you reading “The Infertility Cure“. Dr. Lewis has extensive experience in both Western and Eastern medicine and has helped many couples who struggled with infertility to get pregnant.