Acupuncture for Fertility and Women’s Health

Acupuncture is an important and effective tool that I use to help you with infertility, irregular menstrual cycles, natural hormone balancing, PCOS, menopausal symptoms, miscarriage, stress and other issues that can impact women’s health.

In my Rhythms acupuncture clinics, I specialize exclusively in acupuncture for fertility and acupuncture for women’s health, providing natural fertility options, menopause treatment and women’s health support for those in the Portland and Kennebunk, ME and Portsmouth, NH areas.

acupuncture for fertility and women's health

How can acupuncture for fertility help you conceive?

Acupuncture can help increase blood flow to the reproductive organs for female and male infertility.  Acupuncture also aids in regulating the body’s hypothalamus-pituitary-ovarian axis, helping balance hormone levels to enhance ovarian functions for many conditions including PCOS, unexplained infertility, recurrent miscarriage, advanced maternal age and menstrual cycle quality and regularity.  It can also help with male fertility to improve sperm quality including increasing sperm count and motility and improving sperm morphology.

How can acupuncture for IVF help you conceive?

Acupuncture for IVF is not a one-time event.  A lot of confusion exists as to how and when to use acupuncture in conjunction with IVF, even among general acupuncturists that are not fertility specialists.  At a minimum, acupuncture for IVF can help pre and post embryo transfer.  Acupuncture for IVF is especially important however to prepare your body before your IVF cycle begins.  Research has shown that a minimum number of acupuncture treatments done prior to IVF results in higher pregnancy rates.  The way this can help is by nourishing the follicles and eggs prior to retrieval, improving menstrual cycle quality and improving the endometrial lining.  Bottomline, the more time I have to prepare your body, the higher the conception rates.  I have demonstrated this connection in my PhD thesis.

Not sure if you need just acupuncture or
a more complete approach to getting pregnant?

How can acupuncture for menopause help relieve your menopausal symptoms?

Acupuncture for menopause can help relieve hot flashes, reduce night sweats, balance hormones, improve mood and decrease anxiety and insomnia.  In addition to acupuncture, I frequently employ the use of Chinese herbal medicine and nutrition to help you manage the changing hormones during this time.  Combining these three tools supports your entire body for natural hormone balancing.  Getting you as healthy as possible is the key to minimizing menopause symptoms and acupuncture for menopause combined with herbal medicine and nutrition can help.

Is acupuncture enough to help you conceive?

Acupuncture is just one of the methods of treatment used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to treat fertility, menopause and women’s health issues.  The four major methods of Chinese medicine include acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, nutrition therapy including fertility supplements, and lifestyle therapy (qigong, tai chi, meditation).

In China, herbal medicine is just as important as acupuncture for treating many conditions.  In the hospitals I’ve worked in China, we almost always use a complete approach to helping women conceive combining acupuncture with Chinese herbal medicine and fertility nutrition.  Many acupuncturists in the United States, however, are trained just in acupuncture and are not Chinese medical doctors.  This limits the scope of knowledge and ability to help women conceive without employing the power of the full medicine.

Various adjunctive techniques are also frequently used in conjunction with fertility acupuncture including cupping, gua sha, moxibustion and electro-acupuncture.  Which therapy you need depends on the nature of condition or illness.

If you are in the Portland, Kennebunk, or Portsmouth and surrounding areas and want more information about how I can help you conceive or get healthier,