Will TEAM Work for Me? How Traditional East Asian Medicine Addresses Common Fertility Challenges
When you’re struggling to get or stay pregnant, it can feel like you’ve tried everything—only to face frustration and disappointment month after month. When you’ve been trying for six months or more, the pressure can be especially overwhelming. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Many women find themselves where you are now, looking for answers on how to get pregnant in the face of challenges like Diminished Ovarian Reserve, Advanced Maternal Age, Low Progesterone, Irregular Cycles, Anovulation, Recurrent Pregnancy Loss, or perhaps most perplexing, Unexplained Infertility.
If you’ve received one of these diagnoses, you may feel like your options are limited or your only choice is IVF or other forms of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. It can feel like your body is working against you and your doctors don’t have anything to offer other than expensive and aggressive treatments that aim at bypassing the underlying causes of your fertility struggles instead of healing them.
Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) offers another way forward. Instead of considering your diagnosis as a permanent state of being, TEAM looks to identify organ system imbalances and lifestyle factors that may be contributing to your fertility struggles, and addresses them with personalized treatments that include acupuncture or acupressure, herbal medicine, moxibustion, dietary therapy, and specific exercises to promote circulation and calm your mind. TEAM provides a gentle, yet powerful and effective approach to improving fertility.
In this article:
The TEAM Philosophy
What Causes Infertility
Imbalanced Yin and Yang
Stuck Qi and Blood
Weak Kidney Energy
Common Fertility Challenges
Diminished Ovarian Reserve and Advanced Maternal Age
Low Progesterone/Luteal Phase Defect
Irregular Cycles and Anovulation
Recurrent Pregnancy Loss
The TEAM Philosophy: Balance, Flow, and Vitality
In TEAM, fertility is seen as a reflection of your body’s overall health and balance. Symptoms and conditions arise when your organ systems become imbalanced. These imbalances can occur for many reasons - ongoing exposure to stress, poor eating habits, not enough rest or exercise, past circumstances, and pretty much everything else you experience in life.
Most of the time your body’s able to correct these minor shifts in one direction or another, but if the source of the imbalance is strong enough or goes on long enough, eventually your body will fail to maintain proper balance.
When your body is out of balance it tries to let you know by producing symptoms. If you’re like most people, you’re probably pretty good at ignoring symptoms and minor changes in your body - headaches, period symptoms, and digestive issues are easy to brush off as a normal part of life. Until… the symptoms get big enough that they can’t be ignored. Like not getting or staying pregnant when you’re ready to grow your family.
What Causes Infertility? : A TEAM Perspective
Imbalanced Yin and Yang
Two common patterns that show up in cases of infertility are Yin Deficiency and Yang (rhymes with ‘song’ not ‘sang’) Deficiency. Yin and Yang are terms that are used to categorize all the complementary forces that govern your physiology. These forces are meant to counter-balance one another assuring that neither becomes more dominant and also lending their strength to each other to support their respective functions. Rest balances and supports activity, cooling balances and supports warming. Both Yin and Yang need to be plentiful and in harmony to support conception, early pregnancy, and the ongoing health of you and your baby.
TEAM looks for patterns of imbalanced Yin and Yang that present as symptoms of your period, your digestion, your sleep, and all other areas of function in your body. Additionally, TEAM looks for lifestyle factors that promote or disrupt the balance of yin and yang activity.
In your body, Yin is the basis for everything solid and tangible, the structural elements of your body, as well as the fluids and substances that circulate and nourish these structures. Yin is associated with rest and restoration, softness, coolness, and passivity. Hormonally speaking, estrogen and the follicular phase of your menstrual cycle are dominated by Yin.
Having not enough Yin to balance the Yang aspects of your health can result in symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, dryness of your skin, hair, or mucous membranes, insomnia, and higher than expected temperatures on your BBT chart, especially in the follicular phase.
Lifestyle factors that diminish Yin include not eating enough Yin nourishing foods or not taking in enough calories, staying up late or not getting enough sleep, over exercising, and over-working.
Yang is associated with the activities of your body - your metabolism, your movement and circulation, your energy levels, and warmth. Progesterone and the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle are dominated by Yang.
Insufficient Yang activity can show up as feeling cold, water retention, fatigue, poor digestion, low back pain, and as a gradual rise in temperature following ovulation instead of a sudden rise, and lower than expected temperatures in the luteal phase.
Yang can be negatively impacted by chronic dieting and over exercising, inadequate nutrition, overconsumption of cold and raw foods, chronic illness, as long-term emotional stress.
Stuck Qi and Blood
Qi powers your body and ensures Blood flows smoothly to nourish the uterus and reproductive organs. Problems with blood and qi manifest in stagnation/lack of flow and insufficiency.
Your body is powered by electrical impulses and chemical reactions that create and release all the energy you need to build the structure and substances necessary for proper health. This includes the chemical reactions that cause your heart to beat, the electrical impulses that travel through your nervous system, and the hormones that regulate your metabolism and reproduction.
In TEAM this energy is called Qi (pronounced ‘chee’). Every cell in your body requires Qi to function and every organ and system requires its own kind of Qi to carry out their specific roles. Qi maintenance and production is supported by proper nutrition, rest, and balanced activity.
Qi can be depleted, becoming insufficient to drive normal physiology, or become ‘stuck’, meaning it can’t get to where it’s supposed to and instead builds up in inappropriate places. Both insufficient Qi and stuck Qi can be the result of poor dietary habits - what you eat as well as how you eat, inadequate sleep, excessive exercise, emotional stress, overwork, and the effects of the climate around you.
Blood, as viewed by TEAM, is responsible for nourishing and warming all the tissues of your body, much the same as it is viewed in western medicine. Blood is created when the nutrients and Qi from the food you eat is combined with the Qi present in your body which is then circulated throughout your body. Like Qi, Blood can be insufficient or stuck.
The proper movement of both Qi and Blood are vital to fertility, contributing to the movement of hormones between your brain and reproductive organs, nourishing the uterus and preparing it for conception. Lack of flow of either Qi or Blood can result in impaired ovulation, low hormone levels, inadequate uterine lining, or other impediments to becoming and staying pregnant.
Weak Kidney Energy
TEAM considers the Kidneys to be the root of reproductive health accounting for the genetic makeup and vitality that you inherit from your parents, the regulation and flow of the hormones responsible for menstruation, and determining when you begin menopause.
Kidney function can be categorized into activities associated with:
Yin - hormones, structures, vital fluids, etc., and
Yang - warmth, strength, the ability to maintain pregnancy, etc.,
Jing/Essence - your genetic potential and regulation of the aging process.
Sufficient reserves of all three aspects of the Kidney are vital to supporting fertility.
Like Yin, Yang, Qi and Blood, the Kidneys can be damaged over time by the way you live your life and the experiences you have. While certain aspects of Kidney function can be restored through appropriate eating and lifestyle practices, Kidney Jing/Essence is a finite resource that regulates the aging process. While it can’t be restored, there are ways to slow down its consumption and prevent further degeneration.
Diagnoses such as Diminished Ovarian Reserve and Advanced Maternal Age typically present, at least partially, as deficiencies of Kidney Essence and special care must be taken to preserve and support this aspect of your Kidney health.
Common Fertility Challenges and How TEAM Can Help
Diminished Ovarian Reserve (DOR) & Advanced Maternal Age (AMA)
Hearing that your age is the reason that you’re not getting or staying pregnant can feel pretty hopeless. You can’t turn back time, ask for a do over, or reverse the aging process, can you?
According to TEAM the aging process is regulated primarily by the Kidney system and is influenced by both genetic and lifestyle factors. While there isn’t a lot that can be done about the inherent vitality that you were born with, there are several things that you can do to slow down the effects of aging and divert resources back towards fertility.
By focusing on acupressure, herbs, nutrition, and specific types of exercise to support cellular metabolism, proper production and regulation of hormones, and increased blood flow to the reproductive organs, TEAM has been shown to lower FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) and LH (luteinizing hormone) levels, increase AMH (anti mullerian hormone) and AFC (antral follicle count), and increase the chances of conception in those diagnosed with DOR or AMA.
Low Progesterone/Luteal Phase Defect
Low progesterone or Luteal Phase Defect is a common diagnosis for women struggling to get, and especially stay pregnant. Progesterone is the dominant hormone of the Luteal phase of your menstrual cycle that begins after ovulation. It’s vital for preparing your uterine lining for implantation and sustaining early pregnancy prior to the formation of your baby’s placenta.
While it can be tempting to follow the logic that low progesterone can be remedied by simply supplementing with progesterone prescribed from your doctor or trying herbs that “boost progesterone”, it’s important to understand where progesterone comes from and why your body isn’t making enough.
So where does progesterone come from? It comes from healthy ovulation. In a healthy menstrual cycle, ovulation occurs mid cycle, about two weeks from when your last period started and two weeks before your next period. As ovulation approaches a dominant egg cell reaches maturity and the follicle that surrounds it grows. When ovulation occurs, your mature egg is gathered up by the fimbriae of your fallopian tube and begins its hopeful journey towards fertilization. The follicle left behind transforms into a temporary gland called the corpus luteum. This temporary gland is the source of the progesterone needed to sustain early pregnancy.
In order for the corpus luteum to produce sufficient progesterone the follicle it arises from needs to mature and form properly. That means that all of the hormones associated with the first half of your menstrual cycle, the follicular phase, must be acting in harmony. Your ovary must respond properly to the follicle stimulating hormone released from your pituitary gland in your brain and your pituitary gland must respond to the increasing levels of estrogen to signal the release of luteinizing hormone to trigger ovulation.
As you can see there are a lot of moving parts and it’s not as straightforward as ‘not having enough progesterone’, and simply adding more progesterone won’t address any of the other hormones that are involved in healthy ovulation.
In order to understand why you’re not producing enough progesterone, TEAM uses the signs and symptoms of your menstrual cycle, sleep patterns, digestion, and overall health to discern what hormones are out of balance and why. Based on the specific symptoms you present with and what your BBT chart looks like, appropriate herbs, acupressure points, nutritional strategies and moxa are prescribed to promote health ovulation and increase progesterone levels.
Irregular Cycles or Anovulation
Irregular cycles and anovulation are generally attributed to hormonal imbalances caused by conditions like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), thyroid disorders, or hypothalamic dysfunction. Biomedical treatment typically focuses on ‘regulating’ hormones through medications like birth control pills (which actually just suppresses ovulation), ovulation-inducing drugs like Clomid or Letrozole, or addressing underlying conditions with thyroid or adrenal medications. Often, IVF or other Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) Are suggested as the only way to conceive..
In TEAM, irregular cycles and anovulation are viewed as disruptions in the body’s natural balance, often stemming from imbalances in the Liver, Spleen, or Kidney systems. Liver Qi stagnation, for example, can block the smooth flow of Blood and Qi, leading to cycle irregularities, while Kidney deficiencies may reflect a deeper depletion of reproductive energy. TEAM treatments aim to restore harmony and regulate your cycle addressing the root cause of your hormonal imbalances, not just attempting to bypass them.
The advantage of TEAM when addressing complex syndromes like PCOS that lead to irregular cycles and anovulation is the ability to address multiple organ systems simultaneously. Due to the complex nature of the connections within your body as represented by the acupuncture channel system, acupressure points have the ability to affect multiple systems and structures at the same time. Targeted nutrition and herbal medicine strategies support and remedy cellular metabolism to balance insulin and blood sugar levels that lead to reproductive dysfunction. Stress relieving exercises help you to become more resilient to the unavoidable stresses of life while promoting better Qi and Blood flow throughout your system.
Recurrent Pregnancy Loss (RPL)
Recurrent Pregnancy Loss is devastating in a way that goes much deeper than not being able to conceive at all as hope becomes entangled in fear and grief. Not getting your period can be as emotionally triggering as getting it month after month of trying.
It can be especially frustrating if your OB/Gyn or RE isn’t able to give you a clear answer on why this is happening to you. After ruling out structural abnormalities of your uterus, the usual suspected causes tend to be genetic abnormalities, autoimmune issues, blood-clotting disorders, or underlying infections. If none of these are found you may be facing a diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’ and treated with low dose aspirin or progesterone supplementation in hopes that something will work.
Again, TEAM uses a different lens, taking clues from your entire body, health history, and menstrual cycle and developing personalized strategies to address your specific imbalances. Blood flow regulation, immune system modulation, and protecting normal gene expression can all be accomplished with specific acupressure points and nutritional therapy. And because TEAM views the emotions as intrinsically linked to specific organ systems, it can be helpful in processing the grief and fear that come from multiple pregnancy losses.
TEAM Improves Fertility by Treating You, Not Your Diagnosis
Perhaps you’ve noticed the theme here, that no matter what you’ve been diagnosed with, TEAM approaches treatment in the same way - by identifying patterns in your menstrual cycle, body-wide symptoms, your health history, and lifestyle and using acupressure, herbs, nutrition, moxibustion, and exercises to promote circulation and reduce the effects of stress. While the specifics change depending on where your imbalances lie - Yin, Yang, Qi, Blood, or a specific organ system, the goal of TEAM is always to promote optimum function on a cellular, help your body become more resilient to the effects of stress, let go of physical and emotional tension, and promote proper circulation so that you return to your natural state of being - fertile!
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