How Can Acupuncture Affect Your Fertility?

Trying to get pregnant can be an uphill battle: monitoring ovulation, tracking menstruation, and changing your diet and exercise routine can be extremely stressful, and it’s even worse when you don’t experience success. Luckily, here’s something you can try: acupuncture. Sounds crazy? Here are some ways acupuncture may affect your fertility.

What is acupuncture?

Acupuncture is an alternative medical practice with roots in traditional Chinese medicine. It involves the insertion of sterilized needles, usually of varying lengths between 13 and 130 millimeters, into the body. Historically, acupuncture has been used to treat a variety of conditions, like chronic pain and insomnia.

Many acupuncturists use Chinese herbs in their practice. Additionally, acupuncture addresses conditions related to bodily “balance” such as:

• Flu, cold, and fever
• Perspiration
• Appetite
• Menstrual pain and vaginal discharge
• Generalized pain
• Sleep issues
• Urination and defecation

As always, general health is of vital importance. Acupuncture helps to address it.

Acupuncture for Fertility: Does It Work?

Acupuncture’s efficacy is particularly difficult to study due to the challenges in research design (finding an appropriate control group, for example), but not impossible. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine states that research testing acupuncture’s efficacy is “active,” but that it does seem to have beneficial results for certain conditions.

Two conditions that acupuncture works to address include hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) and hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) — issues that directly affect the ability to get pregnant.

Raymond Chang, a Western-educated physician who is also an acupuncturist, says, “Most of our patients are referred to us by reproductive medicine specialists — they are usually women who have failed one or usually more than one attempt at [in vitro fertilization] and their doctor is looking for something to help implement the success of their treatment, over and above what the protocols alone can accomplish.”

There’s even more scientific support for acupuncture as a way of improving fertility — in a 2002 scientific study for the reproductive health journal Fertility and Sterility, women who received acupuncture experienced a 42.5% pregnancy rate, compared to 26.3% of the women who did not receive acupuncture.

Additionally, always know when you’re at your most fertile. Getting pregnant involves many factors.

Can I Use Acupuncture if I’m Already Pregnant?

Acupuncture can be extremely beneficial to use during pregnancy! Acupuncture can help alleviate some common issues during pregnancy. Some of these conditions include:

• Depression — in a 2010 study, 63% of pregnant women receiving depression-specific acupuncture saw their symptoms improve.
• Morning sickness — nausea during pregnancy is extremely common. In certain studies, acupuncture targeting the wrists has had an effect on relieving vomiting and general nausea.
• Lower back/pelvic pain — we know that general body aches and pains are responsive to acupuncture, and the gynecological issue of pregnancy-associated pelvic pain and lower back pain is no exception.
• Headaches — pregnancy-related headaches are responsive to acupuncture treatments.
• Insomnia — the surge of hormones during pregnancy can keep women up at night. Acupuncture can help alleviate sleep issues.

Here’s the Deal.

Whether acupuncture is used simply for stress relief or to treat medical conditions like an under- or overactive thyroid, if you’re experiencing infertility (defined as at least one year of unprotected sex that does not result in a pregnancy), it could be an option worth exploring.

So, if you’re experiencing fertility issues, it might be beneficial to try turning to traditional Chinese medicine!