Acupuncture and Trying to Conceive

If there was one medical diagnosis that we'd love to toss out the window, "unexplained infertility" would be it.

90% of women who come to see us hoping that acupuncture will help them get pregnant have been given this diagnosis, and in our experience, all it's good for is extinguishing hope and causing doubt in our bodies. These women AREN'T infertile, but they might be sub-fertile, and there usually is an explanation.

In Chinese medicine, we use the many diagnostic tools in our toolboxes to look at how the body is operating as a whole to try to understand why you might be having a hard time conceiving. Looking through the TCM lens often allows us to see possible explanations for why you are struggling, and allows us to work to fix these root imbalances.

Here are some of the typical patterns of imbalance that we see:

Liver Qi Stagnation - usually high stress, PMS, cold hands and feet, irritability, waking between 1-3am.

Blood Stagnation - heavy, clotty, painful, dark periods, fibroids.

Blood Deficiency - very light periods or missed periods, light red/pink in color, parlor, dizziness, dry and brittle hair, eye floaters.

Kidney Yang Deficiency - short luteal phase, frequent feeling of cold, fatigue, low libido, back pain.

Kidney Yin Deficiency - short follicular phase, night sweats, insomnia, thirst.

These "diagnoses" don't just help us create a treatment plan, they also give patients information that they can use to trust in their bodies again, and in our experience, a little bit of hope and trust in our bodies goes a long way!💙