When standard Western medical infertility treatments don’t work, it can lead to frustration, depression, an obsession with becoming pregnant and even divorce. So why do women with no clear reason for infertility issues (unexplained infertility) — women who are perfectly healthy from a Western medical perspective — have trouble getting pregnant? And why can’t the standard procedures and fertility
treatments currently out there help these women?
Western medicine mainly treats infertility by attempting to regulate ovulation. As I have stated before, Chinese Medicine shares a different perspective on how the human body functions. Chinese medicine practitioners focus on treating the entire person — the underlying root of the disease as well as the symptoms. It doesn’t matter how well a gardener takes care of the flowers, leaves and branches of a tree. If the tree doesn’t have strong, healthy roots, it will die.
This is the fundamental difference between Oriental and Western medicine: Oriental medicine practitioners treat the imbalance in the WHOLE body that lead to the disease, while
Western doctors try to only treat the reproductive organs. But when the two practices are used on a patient to supplement one another, amazing results can be obtained.
Infertility treatments are the best possible example of the amazing results patients can have when they see an acupuncturist in addition to a doctor. In fact, many fertility
clinics in the country now have acupuncturists on staff, or refer their patients to an acupuncture clinic. This isn’t much of a surprise given the fact that numerous studies have shown that acupuncture significantly increases a woman’s chances of getting pregnant. Fertility clinics have about a 25% success rate using just In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). IVF works by combining the egg and the sperm in a lab environment and letting the embryo grow 3-5 days before being transferred into the woman’s womb. But when IVF is combined with acupuncture, the success rate skyrockets to 50%!
But why doesn’t the Western medical approach give perfectresults every time? Why do people struggling with infertility need to go outside the toolbox” of treatments that their doctor has available?
Very often the cause of infertility is the absence of ovulation.
A popular infertility drug prescribed for this is Clomid. It’s thefirst drug given to women that have problems with irregular ovulation. But according to statistics, while Clomid restores regular ovulation 80% of the time — only 40%-50% of these women actually become pregnant. If Clomid fails, then the doctor will suggest IUI (Intra Uterine Insemination). Finally, if even that doesn’t work, IVF is the last and final hope for many desperate couples. But despite the direct insertion of an embryo into the uterus, for many, these expensive, time-consuming, and extremely physically as well as emotionally draining procedures don’t work.
Contrary to what most doctors would have us believe, conception is not a mechanical process. There is more at work than the hormones, the eggs, and the sperm. Our bodies are intricate, complex systems. Most women with infertility issues have problems at a level that simply cannot be diagnosed by Western medicine. They can take as many blood tests and CT scans as they want to try and locate the source of their infertility, but the disruption in the natural cycle of their body is hardly ever pronounced enough to show up on any lab result.
With the help of Oriental medical diagnostic techniques, a skilled acupuncturist can peer into the inside workings of the female body and understand what to do to help their patients get pregnant. One of the keys to treating infertility is to remember that “one size never fits all”. You cannot assign the same procedures and drugs to one patient after another when each patient is a unique and completely different person.
This is an excerpt from my book
Integrative Medicine Guide to Women’s Health.
You can find help for your Natural Health through the benefits of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine at my Rising Phoenix Acupuncture Clinic near you in Scottsdale, located conveniently close to Paradise Valley and North Phoenix suburbs.