Can Acupuncture Help You Get Pregnant?
Acupuncture & Herbal Medicine Have a long history of improving fertility while promoting Overall health
Yes! Acupuncture has been used for thousands of years in East Asia and for the past several decades here in the United States to help both men and women improve their fertility and grow their families.
Acupuncture from an acupuncturist who specializes in women’s health and fertility, like myself, can help you get pregnant by improving the function of your reproductive system and overall health by addressing the root cause of your fertility struggle - not just bypassing symptoms and imbalances.
Acupuncture is minimally invasive, very relaxing, and often leads to stress reduction, improved sleep and digestion, as well as uncomplicated pregnancies and happy, healthy babies. Win. Win. Win.
How Does Acupuncture Work to Help You Get Pregnant?
Acupuncture works by balancing your nervous system to improve organ function. This means acupuncture can help reduce the effects of stress on your body that negatively impact your ability to get pregnant or maintain pregnancy to full term.
The modern world is full of stressors - physical, environmental, mental, and emotional - that can keep your body in a sympathetic nervous system dominated state.
That means your body is in constant Fight or Flight mode.
Although you may be accustomed to experiencing these chronic levels of stress, and may even have come to accept them as an unavoidable part of life, your body still responds in predictable ways to all forms of stress and these responses can impact your ability to get and stay pregnant.
Being in a sympathetic dominant state means that blood flow is pushed toward your muscles, heart, and lungs so that you’re ready to defend yourself through combat or running away.
Seems crazy that unrelenting traffic, nagging emails from your boss, and your mother’s constant questioning about when you're going to give her a grandbaby can send your body into preparations for a boxing match or 50 yard dash, but that’s what happens. Your body reacts to stress the same way no matter the source.
With blood flow diverted to the organs that will help you survive in difficult situations, your reproductive and digestive organs take a back seat. You can, after all, survive for quite some time with less than optimal digestion and fertility.
Surviving, though, is not the same as thriving.
Ideally after a stressful encounter, your body would return to a parasympathetic dominant state in which your body and mind are allowed to rest and digest or “feed and breed,” as the sayings go.
However, life in Modern Society has a way of keeping the stress coming faster than you’re able to recover from it.
Work demands, relationship struggles, family obligations, fear of missing out, global pandemics with constantly changing safety regulations and separation from community - it just goes on and on and on.
Acupuncture can switch on your parasympathetic nervous system
As magical or “woo woo” as it might sound, placing acupuncture needles at specific locations on your body can switch your nervous system out of fight or flight and into rest and digest/feed and breed state.
When in this parasympathetic state, blood flow can normalize and flow to your digestive and reproductive organs, and your heart and breath rate slow. Oxygen and carbon dioxide have more time to be exchanged at the cellular and tissue levels improving cellular metabolism and function.
Your nervous system calms down to allow the tension in your muscles to relax, and your hormones can be processed, produced, and delivered with more balance and efficiency.
How Does acupuncture specifically improve fertility?
That depends on what’s going on with your individual body, mind, and spirit - all of these are important factors in your health according to Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) - the overarching theory and philosophy of which Acupuncture is one part.
Whether or not you have a specific diagnosis from your OB/GYN or Reproductive Endocrinologist, acupuncture can help you get to the root cause of your fertility struggles. The diagnosis from your acupuncturist might sound a little strange because it’s based on specific organ system or “acupuncture meridian” imbalances instead of things like PCOS, endometriosis or Low Ovarian Reserve.
Typically, when I see women struggling with fertility, their diagnosis falls into one or more of several organ patterns - which is how we diagnose all medical conditions through the lens of Traditional East Asian Medicine. I then use that diagnosis to choose the best acupuncture points, herbal formulas, and lifestyle guidance to help you regain balance and fertility.
Diagnosing your fertility pattern:
If you’ve seen your OB/GYN or RE for support with fertility, you’ve likely had your hormone levels tested, possibly ultrasounds or other imaging to look for abnormalities in your uterus, ovaries, or fallopian tubes, and your basic blood work done.
While these results can be useful to your acupuncturist, they’re not what your TEAM diagnosis is based on. Instead your acupuncturist will ask you for a detailed health history, will want to know about your lifestyle, stress levels and sources, how you eat, your exercise habits, your digestion, sleep, and will evaluate the status of all your major organ systems.
Some of it may seem irrelevant or unrelated to your infertility but we use all of this information to see what is out of balance and is contributing to your difficulty getting or staying pregnant.
Acupuncturists Analyse your Period
Although period problems such as heavy, long, painful periods, extreme PMS, and periods that come either too early or too late are very common - they aren’t “normal.” Normal as in representing ideal healthy functioning of your uterus, ovaries, and hormone system.
All of these symptoms are an indication that something is off in your reproductive hormone cycle and that your fertility may be negatively impacted. They also point to specific organ patterns that can affect your fertility and play a large part in informing your diagnosis and treatment plan.
Acupuncturists, like myself, who specialize in fertility and women’s health are trained and skilled in deciphering what your period is saying about your hormones and fertility, and have the tools to bring your hormone cycle back into balance.
An important first step in using acupuncture and other TEAM therapies to improve your fertility and help you have a healthy pregnancy and baby is to track your period.
Not only what day it starts on but also how many days you bleed, how much you’re bleeding, the color and quality of the blood - dark, pale, thick, thin, watery, clotty - and how often your period comes. As well as any symptoms you have before, during, or after your period such as pain, spotting, excessive discharge, or lack of fertile cervical fluid.
Additionally, tracking your basal body temperature (BBT) is a simple way to gain a ton of insight into what your hormones are doing throughout your cycle and how that's affecting your ability to get or stay pregnant. You can read more about that here.
What is Acupuncture treatment for fertility Like?
Acupuncture treatments are calm and relaxing, allowing your body and mind to settle into a parasympathetic nervous system state in which
deep healing
can occur
After your initial consultation and health history review, you’ll be given your personalized treatment plan. While different acupuncturists will have different training, experiences, and preferences, most treatment plans will be a minimum of three months.
This is because it takes three months for your eggs to develop and mature enough for ovulation. That means that the egg that gets ovulated today, was recruited and started to grow and develop three months ago and that it was influenced by all of the events and experiences in your life over those previous months.
Keep in mind though, that the more complex your particular fertility issue is, the longer it may take for your body to make the shifts necessary to become pregnant. It’s not uncommon to stay in treatment for several months or as much as a year or more. During this time you should see significant changes in your period, your BBT chart if you’re keeping one, and improvements in sleep, digestion, and ability to cope with stress.
While acupuncture alone can be used to improve your fertility, the addition of herbal medicine, nutritional supplements and various at-home self-care practices can greatly improve the efficacy of the acupuncture and the rate at which your body is able to shift into a healthier and more fertile state.
Acupuncture for Fertility is Acupuncture for All of You
While your main goal in seeking acupuncture may be to become pregnant, acupuncture and Traditional East Asian Medicine practices, by default, address your health on all levels, from the physical to the mental and emotional. This is because TEAM doesn’t separate any organ or system from the rest of the body.
A problem in one area is a problem for all the rest. The goal of acupuncture and TEAM is to bring balance to your body and mind so that your creative potential can flourish. I want you not only to become pregnant, but to have a healthy uncomplicated pregnancy, a smooth and simple delivery, a healthy thriving baby and a joyful postpartum period.
