You’re wondering what can help you get pregnant. You’re doing all the right things. You exercise several times a week – not too much or too strenuously, but not too little. You’ve cleaned up your diet and given up sugar. You took all the plastic out of your kitchen and replaced all your cleaning products with non-toxic options. You’re taking the recommended supplements.
You use ovulation predictor kits to ensure you’re ovulating and you time your intercourse so you’re having sex during peak fertility times, but not too often. You’ve read more fertility blogs and books than anybody should. But still, no baby. What do you do?
Can Acupuncture Help You Get Pregnant?
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine have been helping people get pregnant for thousands of years. Acupuncture can help people become pregnant by reducing stress, helping regulate hormones, and improving blood circulation to the reproductive organs, including the ovaries and uterus. This can result in better quality eggs and a better uterine lining for the embryo to implant in.
Stress relief: Almost every patient I’ve ever worked with says they feel much more relaxed after acupuncture treatment. It can feel mysterious as to why having thin acupuncture needles induces a “rest and digest” state, but research shows us that it does. That parasympathetic response – as opposed to the well-known “fight or flight” response – is very helpful for your fertility.
Acupuncture can create conditions in the body that allow a healthy egg to release at exactly the right time, and allow the fertilized egg to travel smoothly through the fallopian tube and implant in the uterine lining. And a “rest and digest” state may also allow men to produce better quality and more sperm.
Increased blood flow: Studies show that acupuncture can increase the micro-circulation in the pelvic area. This means better blood flow to all your reproductive organs, which can result in better egg quality and a better uterine lining, both of which are important for getting pregnant.
Hormone regulation: Acupuncture may stimulate the neuroendocrine system to smooth out hormone imbalances that lead to reduced fertility. The hypothalamus, pituitary, ovaries, adrenals, and other organs each play a role in the reproductive cycle, and they all need to produce just the right amount of each hormone at the right time.
Acupuncture can help with these aspects whether you’re trying to get pregnant naturally or with the aid of a fertility doctor. There is a lot of research on improved pregnancy outcomes with acupuncture and IVF, in some cases the chances of pregnancy double with acupuncture compared to without.
Acupuncture can help you get pregnant if you don’t have an explanation for why you aren’t getting pregnant, but it can also help if you know you have a diagnosis that’s associated with difficulty getting pregnant, like PCOS or endometriosis. That said, we highly recommend that you ask your doctor for a fertility workup if you’ve been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for 6 months or longer (12 months or longer for those under 35).
Acupuncture can help you whether or not you’ve been diagnosed with infertility or had difficulty getting pregnant. Some people use acupuncture to prepare their bodies for pregnancy even before they’ve started trying to get pregnant. Your acupuncturist can be a wonderful addition to your fertility team, no matter your circumstances. Even though there are no guarantees with any fertility-focused treatment, every step toward your goal helps you get closer to meeting your baby.
Learn more and schedule an appointment
At Portland Acupuncture Studio, we have three highly skilled acupuncturists ready to help you get pregnant. Contact us today to see how we can support you both on the path to building your family. We are here to help you succeed.
Established patients can schedule online, patients who haven’t seen us at Kwan Yin Healing Center call (503) 701-8766, or email us to schedule your appointment.
