Get to the Point

Can Acupuncture Help You Conceive?

By Kim Seidel

More women are seeking acupuncture to help boost their fertility and enhance their overall health. "Today you can scarcely pick up a magazine publication without some mention to the benefit of acupuncture for various illnesses and conditions," says Jennifer Hanbury Pobiak, a licensed acupuncturist at OneMedicine Associates in Rockville, Md. "Even the Wall Street Journal just recently published an article on the benefits of acupuncture for infertility. Acupuncture has become a mainstream complementary therapy to a large variety of conditions."

While the acupuncture movement may be gaining more popularity in the United States in recent years, acupuncture is an ancient healing art that has been practiced in China for more than 3,000 years. With care and consideration, modern women may be able to reap the benefits of acupuncture for infertility and other health issues.

According to medical definitions, a couple of child bearing age is regarded as infertile when they have not conceived after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse. Yet once a woman decides that she wants to conceive, she can consider using acupuncture, Pobiak says. "The same way that most women now start taking prenatal vitamins and supplements while she is trying to conceive, a woman should take a 'whole-body' approach when attempting to become pregnant," Pobiak says. "These days, the modern woman has a variety of different issues that may affect her fertility."

From working long hours to eating on the run, along with painful periods, PMS and other female issues, women may need a jump-start to get in the right reproductive direction. "These disharmonies may result in difficulties with fertility by affecting various parts of the reproductive cycle: production of the egg, fertilization of the egg, implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterus and the ability to 'hold' the pregnancy," Pobiak says.

Women vary in what they're looking to gain from acupuncture treatments. "Many women trying to conceive want to avoid the undesired side effects and accumulated toxicity from invasive procedures and drug therapies and may desire to use acupuncture as an added fertility boost," Pobiak says. "Other women may have already started seeing a fertility specialist and could be anywhere from testing their hormonal levels to starting procedures such as IUI, IVF, GIFT, etc. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is used to strengthen and balance one's general health so that these procedures are more effective." Pobiak points out that acupuncture also can invigorate sperm and enhance a man's sperm count and motility.