Will acupuncture work for your specific case? At TCM Health Centers, Chinese-trained acupuncturists use a combination of acupuncture and Chinese herbal formulas to treat our infertility patients. Most of our patients have already tried all the Western approaches currently available, including IVF, and have failed to get pregnant. They were told by their doctors that they are "difficult cases," and in some instances doctors refused to treat them for infertility. Our patients come in with endometriosis, irregular periods, poor quality eggs, low sperm motility, etc.
In our clinical experience at TCM Health Centers, we have found that the combination of acupuncture and Chinese herbs, plus dietary changes, will dramatically increase our patients' chances of pregnancy. With the typical Western medicine treatment modality, such as IVF, treatment is concentrated in the weeks immediately before the eggs are harvested and the embryo transplanted. At TCM Health Centers, we evaluate our patients as individuals, rather than focusing exclusively on the egg and sperm, and develop a treatment plan and apply techniques that we believe is best suited to that patient.
When I first saw Tina, she was twenty-nine, and had been trying to get pregnant for six years. She had tried in vitro fertilization many times with no success. As a teenager, Tina had an eating disorder. She didn't get her first period until she was eighteen, and still suffers from irregular periods.
Chris is a good example of the difficulties that a busy, stressful life can bring. She was a 35-year-old woman, an attorney's assistant, with a nine-year-old daughter. She had been trying unsuccessfully to have another child for five or six years. Her doctor did a lot of tests, but could find nothing wrong with Chris or her husband.
When Thomas came to see me, he was a 49-year-old gentleman married for nine years. He had been diagnosed with a low sperm count and low sperm motility. He was given hormone treatments which not only didn't work, but which drastically changed his personality. He went from being quiet and laid-back to being aggressive, with violent thought patterns.
Brent is an athletic, healthy young man in his late 20s. He and his wife came in together, and he seemed embarrassed to tell me his story. At the age of 15, he suffered a bad accident that severely injured his testicles.
Tanya was a 39-year-old woman who had suffered with infertility for five years. After she had been married for several years she was ready to have baby, but she could not get pregnant. She went to see a doctor, and was told that her infertility was related to endometriosis.
Jean was a 35-year-old patient who originally came to see me for problems related to a car accident. These injuries cleared up well with acupuncture and Chinese herbal treatment, and Jean began to talk about her infertility issues. She had a successful career and was happily married for nine years, but she and her husband were both eager to have children and they were unable to conceive.
From a Chinese-medicine perspective, Pam embodies a common problem for older women who want to conceive: Kidney-energy deficiency. Pam came to see me when she was 43. She and her husband had been trying to have a baby for several years, and she had taken fertility drugs without success. Her doctor tried the highest dose possible of the fertility drug, but she only produced a few, unfertilizable eggs, and the doctor told her she might just be too old to have a child.
Joan was a 38 year-old woman who worked for a bank as a loan originator. She and her husband had been trying to conceive for two years. When she came to me, she had three failed attempts at in vitro fertilization (IVF). Prior to IVF, she also had two intrauterine inseminations (IUIs).