Many couples struggle to conceive, which can impact their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Repeated failure to conceive can increase stress, which can in turn further reduce the chances of conceiving. While acupuncture for fertility might draw contrasting opinions from the medical community and the general population alike, few could deny its efficacy for inducing relaxation and promoting general well-being. This would be the first order of business for any condition that seeks help from alternative healing methods like acupuncture. When it comes to aiding conception, reducing stress might even prove to be all that is necessary to achieve success.
How acupuncture works
In general terms, one of the primary goals of acupuncture is to restore the balance and proper flow of energy in a person’s body. Practitioners to this by inserting long, ultra-fine needles into specific locations or points along the skin. These points all correspond to different body parts, both external and internal. Meanwhile, these points are also interconnected through pathways known as meridians.
The stimulation of points along these pathways can generate a response within the body site they’re connected to. This can unblock possible obstructions in energy flow that might be making those sites malfunction. Ideally, restoring and maintaining this stability throughout the body’s systems would give it the means to heal and continually renew itself.
Factors that affect fertility
Many factors can affect fertility. These factors include PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), hormonal imbalance in females, and low sperm count for males. One example of hormonal imbalance in particular is when the female body has too much of the hormone prolactin. This hormone gives the signal to produce breast milk while also disallowing ovulation as a natural form of birth control.
Another example is when the female body has less than optimal amounts of progesterone. Progesterone is crucial because, among other things, it is responsible for allowing an embryo to safely attach to the uterine lining.
Learn more about how acupuncture can help resolve hormonal imbalance.
When high levels of cortisol cause stress, this can also be a factor for female and male infertility alike. Among other things, cortisol can disrupt the process of ovulation. In men, it can cause impotence, affect sperm motility, as well as have an impact on sperm count. Acupuncture can induce relaxation of both the body and the mind by promoting the production of chemicals such as endorphin, which helps lower cortisol.
For men dealing with infertility, there is also the option of herbal therapy, which is also often used as complement to acupuncture for fertility. Many people have also found that treatments involving Chinese herbs for fertility can be helpful.
How acupuncture for fertility can help
As stated above, acupuncture promotes balance throughout the body, but it’s not just the balance of energy it seeks to restore but also of the blood’s circulation. Acupuncture can restore stability to all the body’s systems, especially the ones integral to fertility, like the endocrine. It can also improve blood circulation, with particular attention to the supply of blood to the reproductive organs. Thus, acupuncture for fertility can dramatically increase the likelihood of success. Multiple studies have shown that acupuncture can be especially successful especially when used in conjunction with traditional treatments.
You can undergo acupuncture treatments at any given point during the process of your conventional infertility treatment. This can take place in the period when drugs and injections are promoting fertility. However, this phase typically has undesirable side effects like nausea and anxiety. Nausea and anxiety, in turn, might get in the way of success. Luckily, acupuncture can readily address this.
Acupuncture for fertility can also function as complementary therapy during the first few critical weeks of pregnancy, or even much later. It can help deal with the accompanying stress and anxieties that come with the whole procedure.
About acupuncture in Santa Barbara Herb Clinic
Acupuncture for fertility and other female reproductive health concerns are some of the specialties of Santa Barbara Herb Clinic and its owner and lead practitioner, Tram Pham, L.Ac. She has inherited the clinic’s operations from the late Dr. Henry Han and seeks to continue its deep-rooted legacy of holistic healing here in Santa Barbara. One of the last students of the Balance Method pioneer and Master, Dr. Richard Tan, she effectively and harmoniously combines distal healing acupuncture with other traditional Chinese medicine techniques such as tui na (acupressure), gua sha (scraping), fire or dry cupping, moxibustion, and many others to suit a patient’s needs. The clinic also has an extensive stock of herbs, powders, pills, teas, and other remedies in its Herbal Pharmacy, and it delivers wherever you are in the country.
Contact us to set an appointment, and we shall accommodate a consultation either in person if you could come to the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic or through a phone or video call if you live farther away.
References
https://www.verywellfamily.com/how-does-acupuncture-help-fertility-1959899
https://www.parents.com/getting-pregnant/infertility/treatments/does-acupuncture-for-infertility-work/
https://www.pacificcollege.edu/news/blog/2015/04/17/how-does-acupuncture-fertility-work-increase-chance-conception-without-side
http://americanpregnancy.org/infertility/acupuncture/
