To feel annoyed with acupuncturist

[OstrichRunning]

So, in a nutshell:

I had a frozen embryo transfer last Tuesday. Only because my clinic encourages women to get acupuncture alongside treatment, I have been seeing an acupuncturist. My most recent session was yesterday. She told me, based solely on my pulse, that I have a 'fair to middling chance' of bring pregnant. She also said she could tell 'my body was trying to do something'. At previous sessions, she diagnosed me with a yang deficiency, which she basically described as low energy. She said if I do turn out to be pregnant, she's strongly recommend that I continue treatment throughout the first trimester.

My pulse??

My dd was born through ivf. We were very lucky in that it worked first time, and so up to now I've had some confidence in my body to pull this off again! Now I feel really knocked down. I've three days left of the 2ww and can't help thinking maybe it hasn't worked.

AIBU to feel annoyed with her and upset / worried or am I over-reacting? AIBU to think there's something a bit cynical about her saying is benefit from more treatment if I'm pregnant?

Thanks.

Thanks, TCMpractitioner. That's helpful. It was partly what she said and partly the way she said it that irked ... I think your policy of keeping quiet is wise, and probably what my previous practitioner did.

Two things struck me; "fair to middling chance of being pregnant", to me that means you may be or may not. That's fairly obvious isn't it? TBH I could draw that conclusion.
Also" your body is trying to do something", well that could be anything... make a baby, implant an embryo, support an early pregnancy. I don't think she's been negative, just clumsily hinted at a few things which can't be known at this stage, which may, or may not, be correct. Good luck Op try not to worry

Am I guessing right that you only saw her twice, around your embryo transfer?

No, I saw her twice in the run-up to the transfer, then before and after the transfer, and then yesterday evening.

Is it relevant to mention that once I'm on the table with needles in, she puts on this 1980s elevator music CD before leaving? I know I should ask her not to but there doesn't seem to be an opportunity! This sounds a bit frivolous probably but in a very rare hour to myself the worst cheesy music imaginable isn't going to endear me to anyone is it ... I'll stop complaining now.

I always ask if patients want some music.
I personally hate it. I much prefer some peace and quiet.

So yes please, just tell her.

I would be inclined to recommend you should forgot everything she said. Why on earth take medical advice from alternative practitioners who don't hold any proper medical qualifications.

Don't go back to her. It's unscientific nonsense anyway and the placebo effect may well be nullified by your annoyance and irritation at her. The relaxation element certainly is!

I know this is very stressful but really, your confidence or otherwise in the success of your IVF treatment will have no effect. So it doesn't matter what anyone or even you thinks about the likelihood of success.

For what it's worth, my interpretation of her phrasing is much more positive than yours - I would see her "fair to middling" as saying she thinks you will be pregnant but covering herself in case you are not. But in any case, she is a conscious or unconscious charlatan; all alternative medicine is.

As for "your body trying to do something", of course it is. It is always doing something merely by existing and in your specific case, it is either accepting (hopefully) or rejecting the transferred embryo. I am willing to bet if you had presented to an acupuncturist without giving a history, there is no way they would diagnose any of these vague things.

I hope it all works out for you. please don't waste any more money or time on these unscrupulous people.

If you are having IVF then surely you already have fertility issues. forgive me but if someone told me there was a fair to middling chance that I was pregnant I'd be over joyed!!! I think you have allowed your own fears to project onto someone who was innocently trying to reassure you.

Personally acupuncture saved my health after a series of miscarriages and was instrumental in keeping me healthy throughout my 7th pregnancy and only successful pregnancy.

Your own anxiety is understandable, you want certainties but no-one can give you these. Imagine if she had told you that she thought you were definitely pregnant and then you weren't. there are codes of conduct. Instead now you have created a thread that calls into question not only her but a whole profession!?!

LF78, I'm glad you have had such a positive experience of acupuncture. I think you might not have read all my posts, as I'm definitely not calling any profession into question! (except maybe whoever is in the business of making bad elevator music cds). Not sure how you took that from it. I think this individual behaved badly, that's all.

Spreadyourhappiness the GMC and WHO would disagree: there is peer reviewed scientific evidence for acupuncture, but obviously (because of the regs for how testing is done) it can only be tested for one specific benefit at a time. Fertility is one of those for which testing was positive. Alleviation of chemo side effects was another.

Hi OstrichRunning

I am so sorry to hear that you felt so shaken up after your acupuncture session. I do hope that your IVF treatment was successful and your pregnancy test was positive! Thank you for posting about your experience. As an acupuncturist myself, it made me stop and think more carefully about what I say to my ladies going through IVF.

It has also been interesting to read all the comments on this thread and I just wanted to clear up a few points raised by those who responded to your post.

Scientific evidence
The scientific evidence base for acupuncture is strong and its efficacy beyond placebo is well established for many conditions. For some years now, NICE (which advises the NHS on what treatments to use) has recommended that GPs prescribe acupuncture instead of medication for certain conditions. In their 2003 report about the clinical trials researching the effectiveness of acupuncture, The World Health Organisation identified 28 conditions for which acupuncture has been proved through controlled trials to be an effective treatment, and 72 conditions for which the therapeutic effect of acupuncture has been shown in preliminary trials where bigger studies are now needed > www.evidencebasedacupuncture.org/who-official-position/.

For those who have dismissed acupuncture out of hand, while I believe your comments about acupuncture were made in kind support of OstrichRunning, please consider the evidence for medical procedures before discounting them publically, as your comments may prevent someone in pain or distress from accessing appropriate treatment.

Fertility in particular
There are numerous good quality studies demonstrating that acupuncture increases your chances of pregnancy, like the one mentioned in the Telegraph recently > www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/04/acupuncture-doubles-chance-of-having-a-baby-with-ivf-study-sugge/.

This trial concluded that acupuncture can double your chances of IVF success and that placebo could not be discounted as a reason for it working. Now that would be one heck of a placebo! The confusion over placebo arises from inherent difficulties in designing clinical trials for medical procedures where you can’t really hide from the practitioner and/or the patient whether or not it is ‘the real deal’. The double-blind randomised controlled trial is brilliant for testing drugs, but not very useful when it comes to things like surgery, physiotherapy and acupuncture. This YouTube video explains the problem well > .

Telling if someone is pregnant by taking their pulse
Before I completed my degree in acupuncture, I would have agreed that no one could tell if you were pregnant by taking your pulse. However, it’s really not that bonkers when you consider that your heart and arteries are a part of your body like any other, changing as your body changes. Your pulse speeds up when you’re anxious, the walls of your arteries tense up when you’re tense (they are made of muscle after all) and you can feel this tension when taking a pulse. Your pulse and arteries changes in other ways too. One study demonstrated changes in blood flow as a result of acupuncture – including vasodilation (widening of the artery) that can be felt with a fingertip on the pulse > www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3388479/.

I suppose pulse diagnosis isn’t really that different from other manual techniques used to examine how your body is working, like when a doctor presses on your abdomen to feel your internal organs.

The pulse does change in a very distinctive way during pregnancy. This change becomes more marked as the pregnancy progresses, so only very skilled practitioners can pick up the change so early. Acupuncturists take literally thousands of pulses, day in and day out, so it’s not that surprising that some will be able to detect very subtle changes indeed. In fact, one study found that the part of the brain involved in feeling sensations with the fingers (e.g. during pulse taking) had grown bigger in acupuncturists than non-acupuncturists > journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0066591

Recommending further treatment
I believe that, in this case, the acupuncturist was right to recommend treatment during early pregnancy, as this is what the leading textbook on acupuncture for IVF recommends where Kidney Yang Xu presents. Working in private medicine, Acupuncturists often find themselves in a difficult situation where they risk being accused of money-grabbing when a higher dose of acupuncture is in the best clinical interests of the patient. While I have sometimes found myself in this position, I have also cancelled patients’ appointments when more acupuncture is not appropriate for them. In my experience, acupuncturists are definitely not in it for the money – I used to make 3 times as much when I worked in business. Considering its evidence base, acupuncture is cheap compared to the cost of Western adjunctive procedures for IVF. If I really wanted to make money out of private healthcare, I would have gone into Western medicine. :-)

There is no scientific basis for Acupuncture; it is a pseudoscience.

You are the ones doing harm by bullshitting people that there is, because it prevents people from getting proper medicine.

There is a reason it is called alternative medicine: it can't be called medicine due to no scientific evidence.

Hi @SpreadYourHappiness

Thank you for taking the time to read my post and for your reply. I like people who stand up for their beliefs, which you are certainly doing. Like you, I tend to be sceptical by nature and scientific in my thinking, and I took some convincing before going to my first acupuncture treatment! However, I am very glad that I did, because it utterly changed my life.

As mentioned before, there is a strong and ever growing scientific evidence base for acupuncture, such that it is becoming increasingly established as mainstream in medical circles and is now seldom referred to as “alternative”. For example, a British Medical Association (BMA - the professional association and registered trade union for doctors in the UK) review concluded that “Acupuncture should become more widely available on the NHS and family doctors should be trained in some of its techniques …” You are likely to find a distinct lack of bullshit in BMA reviews. See this link for the British Medical Journal article about the review > www.bmj.com/content/321/7252/11.3

If you still feel disquieted by the idea of acupuncture as effective medicine, I can recommend reading ‘The Spark in the Machine’ by Dr. Daniel Keown ( www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Machine-Science-Acupuncture-Explains-Mysteries-Western-Medicine/1848191960?tag=mumsnetforum-21 ). Dr. Keown is a Western medical doctor who practices emergency medicine in the UK, and also studied Chinese medicine. His excellent book explores the physiological basis for acupuncture and bridges the gap between Western and Eastern ideas of how the body works.

Thank you for the very interesting and thoughtful explanations Acupuncturist.

I had / have a medical condition and a friend recommended an accupuncturist, (I had no real expectation if acupuncture one way or the other)..They constantly tried to "cold read" me. It was really embarrassing as I am quite familiar with the techniques and I'm afraid they might as well have had "charlatan" spelt out in twinkly little tea lights underneath their framed professional qualifications.

I am forever grateful for my amazing acupuncturist who correctly diagnosed problems, without any mambo jumbo or magic spells, and fixed them. Interestingly, she works part-time in my GP surgery. Life saver, litterally.

Thank you @claraschu, it is my pleasure. Thank you also @nothercupoftea - I am delighted that acupuncture worked so well for you. Like your acupuncturist, I used to work in a GP surgery and had a great relationship with the GPs and the pharmacist there.

Thank you for your patience Acupuncturist - I should have properly explained in my post that BMA stands for British Medical Association, and WHO for World Health Organisation. I have very little patience for those who espouse "alternative" medicine with no scientific testing or basis, but equally low tolerance for those who ignore the research if it goes against their assumptions. Especially when lab work takes so long!

Funny how 'having faith in the process' and 'staying positive' are of such importance. Almost sounds like a placebo...

Real medical treatment doesn't require faith.