Fertility Acupuncture: Risks, Odds, And Efficacy

If you and your partner have been trying to conceive for months with no success, you may be tempted to try some fertility treatments. Honestly, however, what can you really afford? IVF, donor eggs and donor sperm, donor embryos, and a series of hormone shots prior to harvesting your own eggs to be fertilized in a petri dish is hardly affordable. Know what is affordable? Herbal remedies and fertility acupuncture is affordable, and there is enough evidence to sway even the most critical of critics. If you want to try acupuncture first, here are your risks, odds, and efficacy for getting pregnant.

Risks

Risks are actually low. The needles used in acupuncture may pinch a little at first, but after a bit, most people do not feel them. That is because the needles block pain receptors in your nerves in your back and spine. A licensed acupuncturist has spent years training in this field, so he/she knows exactly where and how to place the needles. It is also suggested that your partner receive fertility acupuncture at the same time so that both of your bodies are "in sync with your own ​chis as well as your partner's ​chi."

​Odds

Studies have shown that couples who use fertility acupuncture in conjunction with other treatments have a much higher chance of conceiving than those who did not have acupuncture as part of their participation in the studies.

When used in conjunction with Western fertility treatments, acupuncture increases conception rates by 26%

​Is it a placebo effect? No one knows for sure, but the couples whose conception rates jumped up that much in the study were certainly happy with the results. It might work for you and your partner too, whether you believe in acupuncture or not.

Efficacy

Is fertility acupuncture effective? Well, that is hard to say. It is not one-hundred-percent effective, but it has been proven to help in many cases. If you look at the fact that modern medicine is not one-hundred-percent effective at getting you pregnant either, it is a safe argument that anything in the way of treating your fertility issues is worth trying at least once. If you choose to exhaust all of your money and your time and your energy on modern medicine, you may just come around to giving alternative medicine options (like acupuncture) a try. At the very least, you have nothing to lose. At most, you have everything to gain.