Acupuncture and Having a Baby

People always ask me, "What is acupuncture good for?" My answer is always, "Everything!" This is a medicine that believes in the body's ability to heal itself. It trusts the Wisdom of the body and the Wisdom of the Creator of this body knowing that all the answers to healing lie within. Over the years, I have seen amazing results, heard unbelievable stories, and have been humbled by peoples' experiences, ailments and recoveries, which changed my beliefs about what I thought I knew to be true. I didn't think when I started this journey that fertility support was going to be one of my specialties. It just goes to show that you never know where life is going to throw you but wherever you land is exactly where you are supposed to be.

What I love most about medicine is that every person is treated as an individual. If I have 100 girls come to see me for fertility support, I can have 100 different treatments because not one person has the same concerns, same symptoms, or same story. A practitioner of acupuncture has to take all of this into consideration when making a plan for treatment and just because a treatment was a success for one does not mean it will be a success for all. The individual matters and must be heard.

So why do I think we need help conceiving? Well, first of all, I think we all need help with something. We are supposed to be a community. In a community, different people have special and unique jobs. We send our children to the teachers, get our letters from the mail carriers, get our food from the bakers...you get the idea. But we don't think of needing help when we are ready to start a family. We think of this as being the next biological step to marriage, the creation of family...and having others involved in the process doesn't seem very natural or fair. Most of the clients that come to see me feel very alone in this struggle and don't easily share their challenges with friends or family. If I could just tell anyone facing this obstacle one thing, I would love to say "Many couples are struggling with this issue, they believe that they are alone. You are not alone, at all."

Hormones are off balance for most people, especially if you are an American, because stress levels are high and we haven't learned how to properly calm the body. People are finally enjoying the benefits of yoga, meditation and breathing but it is still seen as more of a luxury than a necessity. To understand how this system works, we have to see the workings of the nervous system through the HPA-axis. It stands for Hypothalamus, Pituitary, Adrenal axis but also includes the thyroid, pancreas, sex hormones and immune system. Here is how it works: your central nervous system is composed of 2 parts. It is like a light switch, it can either be turned 'ON' or 'OFF'. When it is 'ON', we are working with the sympathetic nervous system aka 'Fight or Flight'. When we are 'OFF', we are switched to a building, wondering what is coming next. In this mode, it is very difficult to conceive. With all of the danger, the body doesn't believe that it is the best idea to have a baby, it is busy just surviving. So how do we know if we are switched into the other mode? Easily...we would sleep through the night and wake up feeling rested and ready to go. We would eat our food with no stomach pains or digestive complaints and we would feel "in the mood", not just get in the mood because the stick says I'm ovulating.

This is why, in an acupuncture treatment, it is so important to identify any stressors or imbalances occurring in the bod while helping to calm the body, allowing it to be in this parasympathetic state. In this relaxed state, the body can do unbelievable works; it can create miracles. Acupuncture is a great tool that can be used to help you support the body to create those miracles you wish to see in your life.