At Vela Wellness we specialize in supporting you through the continuum of fertility, pregnancy and postpartum. Allie Machen, LAc has been supporting growing families for over a decade as both a doula and an acupuncturist. She is proud to be a Fellow of the American Board of Reproductive Oriental Medicine (ABORM), a board dedicated to promoting the best combination of both Eastern and Western reproductive care. ABORM fellows have passed a rigorous exam, stay up to date on the latest fertility treatments and are able to work collaboratively with your western fertility doctors. While roughly 1 in 8 couples experience infertility, it can be extremely isolating and daunting. Schedule a free consult to learn how bringing an experienced acupuncturist on to your support team can help.
Fertility acupuncture is beneficial when you are:
- Hoping to regulate your cycle to prepare for future conception or when coming off birth control
- Trying to conceive naturally without the help of medication, IUI or IVF
- Working with a provider doing medicated or unmedicated IUI
- Going through IVF
- Transferring an embryo (check out this research on transfer day acupuncture!)
Acupuncture works to enhance fertility by:
- Regulating reproductive hormones
- Normalizing insulin sensitivity
- Promoting uterine and ovarian blood flow increasing the thickness of the uterine lining
- Promoting ovulation
- Lessening the side effects of medications used to treat infertility during IUI and IVF cycles
Acupuncture and herbal medicine together have also been shown to:
- Increase sperm count, morphology and motility
- Improve egg quality over a period of three months
The nitty gritty:
- Acupuncture may stimulate and blood flow by inhibiting central sympathetic nerve activity
- Acupuncture may help regulate and enhance menstrual regularity, fertility and ovulation by triggering neurotransmitters which increase GnRH
- Acupuncture may stimulate production endogenous opioids, which may inhibit the central nervous system’s outflow and the biological stress response
Conditions impacting fertility that acupuncture and East Asian medicine may treat include but are not limited to:
- Painful or heavy periods and PMS
- Irregular cycles or anovulation
- Endometriosis
- Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)
- Low AMH
- Low progesterone or luteal phase issues
- History of miscarriage or recurrent miscarriage
- Unexplained infertility