TCM describes the female reproductive system as a network of energy systems. Each energy system has complementary organs and hormonal responses. This network responds to stress, chemicals, lack of exercise, poor diet and excess emotions all of which can put the body ‘out of balance’. A TCM practitioner will carefully determine the state of your imbalances and prescribe an individualized program of herbs, acupuncture and diet to help you create the correct environment for fertility and pregnancy.

Stress Reduction
Psychological stress can have a negative effect on couples facing fertility problems. Stress leads to the release of stress hormones and causes detrimental effects on mechanisms responsible for a normal ovulatory menstrual cycle. The success of acupuncture for reducing stress and anxiety is due to its beta-endorphin release and sympathetic calming effects.

Stress causes the sympathetic nervous system of be over stimulated. Thus, the blood flow is diverted away from the ovaries and uterus to the adrenals (stress coping gland) instead. This can cause irregular cycles, lack of ovulation, and infertility. Electro acupuncture and Femoral Artery Massage redirect the blood flow back to the ovaries and uterus, enhancing fertility and regulating your cycle.

Acupuncture Strengthens The Immune System
Many women with immunological factors hostile to pregnancy have been effectively treated with TCM prescription of diet, herbs, and acupuncture. When an acupuncturist treats the root problem, the immunological markers correct themselves.

Fertility Hormone Regulation
Acupuncture has been known to control pain through stimulating the release of beta-endorphin. In addition, beta-endorphin works to influence the source of women’s ovulatory and fertility hormones (the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis) and control hormones that regulate a women’s ovulation and fertility that includes gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), follicle stimulating hormone (F.S.H.), luteinizing hormone (L.H.) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG).

Regulates Hormones Creating Better Egg Quality
Acupuncture normalizes the dysfunction of the Hypothalamus- Pituitary - Ovarian Axis. This improves ovarian function creating more follicles, and better egg production. It has also been suggested that the concentrations of central opioids may regulate the function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis via the central sympathetic system, and that a hyperactive sympathetic system in anovulatory patients could be normalized by ElectroAcupuncture (Chen and Yin, 1991). It has been assumed that various disorders in the autonomic nervous system, such as hormonal disturbances, may be normalized during auricular acupuncture (Gerhard and Postneck, 1992). Source: www.acubalance.ca

Acupuncture Lessens Side Effects From Clomid
Clomid often causes the uterine lining to thin, which is detrimental to becoming pregnant. Acupuncture causes the uterine lining to thicken and become more uniform. This is a result of increased blood flow to the uterine arteries, as proven in the article referenced just below.

I.V.F. Assistance With Acupuncture Treatment
This study shows that acupuncture increases blood flow to the uterine arteries, creating a thicker and more regular lining, allowing for IVF to be more successful. Acupuncture also improves ovarian blood flow to increase ovarian response.

Reduction of blood flow impedance in the uterine arteries of infertile women with Electro Acupuncture Stener-Victirin,et al., Human Reproduction, Vol 11, no6. pp. 1311-17, 1996

Decreases Uterine Contractility at Implantation:
Study: Influence of Acupuncture on the pregnancy rate in patients who undergo ART. Fertility a& Sterility Vol77 April 2002

Patients in the acupuncture group received two acupuncture sessions - the first treatment 25 minutes before embryo transfer, the second treatment 25 minutes after. In the acupuncture group, the pregnancy rate was "considerably higher" - 34 women (42.5%) were carrying a fetal sac at the time of examination."

"Relaxing the uterus with Acupuncture treatment allows for more successful IVF."

Acupuncture Decreases The Chance Of Miscarriage
Acupuncture relaxes the uterus, increases blood flow to the uterus, warms the uterus, increases the immune system, regulates the hormones and decreases stress, all creating less of a chance of miscarriage.

Study: Acupuncture Improves Fertility In Men, Too
According to statistics from the National Infertility Association (an organization also known as RESOLVE), between 35 percent and 40 percent of infertility problems among couples are actually caused by male conditions. A recent trial published in Fertility and Sterility has shown just how effective acupuncture can be in the treatment of this condition, leading to significant increases in the number of normal sperm and equally significant reductions in structural defects. Thus, Acupuncture improves sperm count, motility, and morphology.

CAROL HARADA lay on her back, eyes closed, on cushions strewn across the floor of a studio in Emeryville, Calif. Several people, some clutching musical instruments, quietly gathered around. It was her turn to receive a group healing.

One person held her feet. Another touched her head. Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. Ms. Harada, 40, then stated that her intention was to release the dull pain in her left shoulder.

"The physical touch was important, to remind me I was safe and directly connected to people doing healing work on my behalf," she wrote in an e-mail describing her experience last spring.

Then, using their voices and acoustic instruments - bowls made from crystals, an Australian didgeridoo, bells and drums - the participants gently bathed Ms. Harada in sound.

When the sonic massage ended several minutes later, Ms. Harada's eyes fluttered open. She felt grateful, peaceful and when she stood up, found that the range of motion in her shoulder had increased.

For decades people have relaxed and meditated to soothing sounds, including recordings of waves lapping, desktop waterfalls and wind chimes. Lately a new kind of sound therapy, often called sound healing, has begun to attract a following. Also known as vibrational medicine, the practice employs the vibrations of the human voice as well as objects that resonate - tuning forks, gongs, Tibetan singing bowls - to go beyond relaxation and stimulate healing. "It's like meditation was 20 years ago and yoga was 10 to 15 years ago," said Amrita Cottrell, the founder and director of the Healing Music Organization in Santa Cruz, Calif., and the leader of the class that Ms. Harada attended.

While many people are only just discovering it, sound healing is actually a return to ancient cultural practices that used chants and singing bowls to restore health and relieve pain. It is often introduced at mind-body or wellness festivals. Thousands of healers from almost every state and many countries have created Web sites about sound healing.

Schools for certification have sprung up too, though certification is hardly standardized. The healers include medical doctors, academics and people with no medical or scientific background at all. What they have in common is a belief in the potency of sound to not only promote relaxation, but relieve ailments, from common aches and pains to the anxiety that accompanies chemotherapy.

People who have tried sound healing say they like it because it is noninvasive and relaxing. And lying on a cushion, exercising only the ears, is decidedly easier than stretching into the downward dog pose.

No controlled clinical trials have been done to show that sound healing works, said Dr. Vijay B. Vad, a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan and a doctor for the P.G.A. Tour. But those who try sound healing may feel their pain diminish, because pain is notoriously subjective, Dr. Vad said. Some 35 percent of people with back pain find relief from a placebo, he noted.

Sound healing, like other mind-body treatments, he said, could act as a placebo, or it may distract the mind, breaking a stress cycle. "Even if it breaks your cycle for 15 minutes, that's sometimes enough to have a therapeutic effect," Dr. Vad said.

Sylvia Pelcz-Larsen of Boulder, Colo., an acupuncturist who was suffering from excruciating back pain, tried a form of sound healing called Acutonics, which involves applying tuning forks to acupressure points on the body.

"I got a 10-minute session, and my back was about 80 percent better," she said. "It changed my life." Ms. Pelcz-Larsen now teaches classes through the Kairos Institute of Sound Healing, which is based in New Mexico but offers classes throughout the world, and has incorporated tuning forks into her acupuncture practice, along with Tibetan singing bowls, planetary gongs and chimes.

Using forks and bowls for anything other than dinner may seem to some people like New Age nonsense. But healers, sometimes called sounders, argue that sound can have physiological effects because its vibrations are not merely heard but also felt. And vibrations, they say, can lower heart rate variability, relax brain wave patterns and reduce respiratory rates.

When the heart rate is relatively steady, and breathing is deep and slow, stress hormones decrease, said Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor, an oncologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York and the author of "The Healing Power of Sound." That is significant, he said, because stress can depress every aspect of the immune system, "including those that protect us against flu and against cancer."

Ms. Cottrell pointed out that ultrasound, which employs vibrations in frequencies above the range of human hearing, has been used therapeutically. "When the body is sick - it could be a cold, a broken bone, an ulcer, a tumor, or an emotional or mental illness - it's all a matter of the frequencies of the body being out of tune, off balance, out of synch," she said. "Vibration can help bring that back into balance."

Sound healing works like the cry you make when you stub your toe, said Jonathan Goldman, the director of the Sound Healers Association in Boulder, and the author of "Healing Sounds: The Power of Harmonics." "Have you ever been able to stub your toe and not make a sound?" he asked. "It hurts a lot more."

The cry, he suggested, may stimulate endorphins or create resonance with the part of the body that is in pain and lessen it. Or, he said, the cry you emit may simply distract you from the pain.

Dr. Gaynor distinguishes between curing and healing. To "cure" means physically to fix something, whereas "healing" refers to wholeness, a union of the mind, body and spirit, he said. Dr. Gaynor, who has an oncology practice in Manhattan, considers sound healing integrative medicine: not an alternative to science but a complement to it.

He leads free biweekly support groups for his patients that involve chanting and playing Tibetan singing bowls. The bowls are made of several kinds of metal; when struck gently on the rim with a wood baton, they vibrate at different frequencies, making sounds not unlike church bells.

When Marisa Harris of Manhattan first saw Dr. Gaynor with one of his Tibetan bowls she thought he was going to prepare pasta. But when he began to play them, she said, it was the first time since she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer that she could hear something other than the words "you're going to die."

"It was as if all of a sudden there was room for possibility," she said. The sound, Ms. Harris said, penetrated her body and made her feel as if it were not only her thoughts about death that were breaking up, "but these poisonous cells, these cancer cells, were breaking up and I experienced something very healing."

More than seven years later she plays her own singing bowls every day, often chanting the names of her three children, her husband and other loved ones. The bowls, she said, helped her express feelings she had bottled up inside. Sometimes, she said, she talks to the bowls about her fears. "The sound would take them away," she said, "out of my being, out of my existence."

Mr. Goldman draws an analogy between sound healing and prayer. Many cultures, he said, believe that vocalizing a prayer amplifies it. By the same token, he said, expressing what you want a sound to accomplish (Ms. Harada's wish to release the pain in her left shoulder, for example), can help you heal yourself - or someone else.

Dr. Gaynor likens sound healing to music therapy. In "The Healing Power of Sound" he cites studies indicating that music can lower blood pressure, reduce cardiac complications among patients who have recently suffered heart attacks, reduce stress hormones during medical testing and boost natural opiates.

But not everyone who partakes in sound healing is in need of medical treatment. Ms. Harada's husband, Greg Bergere, attended the sound healing classes in Emeryville even though he had no physical ailments. They left him feeling refreshed. "It felt like I just had a really relaxing night's sleep," he said. For some people, that alone may be worth the price of a singing bowl.

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How Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Enhances Fertility