Acupuncture or reflexology - which of these helped you conceive?

[artylady14]

Hi lovely pregnant ladies. Congrats on your pregnancy! I'm still trying and spending a lot of money on therapies to regulate my period and make it easier to concieve. I have been having acupuncture for several months now and just had a couple of reflexology sessions too. As you can imagine this is very expensive to have both in a week. Acupuncture has not worked for me yet but at the time of starting sessions I have had some stressful life events like getting married to deal with. Stress over but periods got even more irregular so I thought I would try reflexology too. Very relaxing but did either of these get you pregnant (esp with PCOS)! Thanks for advice!

I also have pcos. I had regular reflexology alongside dieting through healthy eating and regular excercise. I approached it more from a trying to get myself healthy in advance of ttc rather then just for fertility but my periods went from once every 3-4 months to every 35 days. I was amazed. I do think diet and excercise is really important for pcos ladies - low gi and 30 mins excercise 5 days a week worked for me. Best of luck.

I have been a fan of acupuncture for years. I started it 7-8 years ago when I was ttc my DS. I did conceive, but I don't know if acupuncture helped. I had read that it would help my age related issues (I conceived him at 41). It really helped me relax about everything, helped with period pain (it disappeared) and just helped me feel "well".

I think it is great. I know someone up thread says it isn't supposed to relax you, but it really works on me in that way. I literally feel like I have had a dose of some sort of anaesthetic. When the needles are put into me, starting at my feet, I feel a rush of warmth travel up my body and instantly relax. I don't know if it is placebo, but I love the way it feels.

However, I have been ttc since my DS was 10 months old.So, about 6 years. I have been pregnant again, but have miscarried 4 times. So I can't say that acupuncture has worked for me in that way. I am not surprised,as I am now ancient in TTC terms.

I've had ivf several times, I tried acupuncture and found it to be pointless and expensive. I found it better to spend my money improving my diet, joining a gym/swimming etc all of which improved my health and reduced stress.

Btw ivf worked for me, in conjunction with the diet and fitness improvements.

artylady14 I read Gerad Kite's book on 5 element acupuncture and it seemed really good to me. I actually read it before ttc, out of general interest as a friend is an acupuncturist and raved about it. From memory it was about doing things in your life to support your fertility and to support any treatments. Might be worth a read? He also has videos on YouTube which I found fascinating! If you can do things that will make your treatments have more impact (though you may already be doing them) maybe that will help you decide what's best for you?

I've been off MN for months and wasn't planning to comment but I had to add my tuppence worth.

I completely reject pp comments that accupuncture is proven not to work - it's just not true. There is a lot of evidence to show that accupuncture can be very effective for certain conditions, particularly chronic conditions. It doesn't "cure" everything, just like surgery isn't suitable for every condition, but it certainly has its place.

I have personally had accupuncture treatment for digestive problems (pain was so bad that I was regularly curled up on the floor of my office, within a couple of weeks pain had almost disappeared), and have close family and friends who have had effective treatment for painful/irregular periods, ovarian cysts, joint problems, and RSI. In each of these instances "standard" western medicine was unable to help, and accupuncture provided effective, lasting treatment.

Here in France, where I live, accupuncture has been accepted as part of general medicine, is funded by the national health insurance system, and the state hospital where I had IVF treatment had two accupuncturists among their staff. My GP is also an accupuncturist - she won't try to treat cancer with accupuncture, but uses it in particular for chronic problems that "regular" medicine doesn't treat very well.

Menstrual problems is one area where accupuncture can be particularly effective and you can find plenty of evidence of this from a little online research. The best results, however, seem to be in regulating periods, managing PCOS symptoms, controling ovulation and complementing fertility treatment - if you have unexplained infertility that doesn't relate to these then I don't know how effective it would be (eg in our case DH's sperm was the issue, so accupuncture for me wasnt' going to help!). That said, my practioner recommended I have a session at a particular point of my IVF treatment (post-egg collection, pre-embryo transfer) to improve chances of implantation. Result: 25 weeks later here I am on the pregnancy board.

That said, the quality of practioners varies greatly in the UK, and it makes a huge difference who your practioner is - I would certainly want to see someone who specialises in treating women with fertility/menstrual problems, and would expect them to get a full understanding of your overall health and make clear how they were planning to treat you. I had one practioner who seemed in a rush to lie me down and get the needles out - another spent at least 30 mins just talking to me about my health, lifestyle, relationships, etc. Needless to say, she was the best!

Sorry that's much longer than I'd planned, I just felt the discussion needed a bit more balance. Whatever you decide, of course excercise and a healthy diet make a big difference too, and a relaxing holiday can never do any harm!

Best of luck!

Thanks for all your comments. I will look up the book NeuroticFox

The NHS do prescribe acupuncture- mainly for, I believe, pain relief and pain associated with chemo. I think these are the areas it has been proven to be beneficial. Private fertility clinics also frequently prescribe it with IVF, my acupuncturist (who is also a medical dr) does lots of fertility acupuncture

Acupuncture is proven not to work. The French health system has its strengths, but also some infuriating weaknesses - you never leave the surgery without a truckload of pills and potions because it's the cultural norm there. Their acceptance of acupuncture is NOT evidence based medicine. It's just as quacky as the nhs and homeopathy.

Sham studies with both mock needling and needling in random places show no difference between the false treatment and the real. None. It's what is called "theatrical placebo."

Let me just debunk the myth that it's been popular in China for 1000s of years and was driven out by big bad western medicine. It wasn't. It had almost died out after being banned as ineffective superstition in the 1820s. In the 1960s, Mao brought it back into vogue because it boosted Chinese nationalism and there was a severe shortage of properly trained doctors. Interestingly, he never used it himself. If you go to China today you'll find more traditional approaches used for everyday aches and pains (herbal remedies often DO have active properties) but for anything serious, it's western medicine all the way.

People have very strong feelings about acupuncture because they feel it worked for them and they don't want to think they have been taken in. But, the plural of anecdote is not data. People would never take a drug which had proven to be ineffective in trials, would they? No. But they believe in accupuncture, chiropractic ( which can be actively harmful) and all other forms of woo.

Peer reviewed studies, and meta studies have shown, conclusively, that it doesn't work. It's theatrical placebo - the time taken by the practitioner, the slight pain, etc. As the poster above shows, the practitioner who spends the time with the patient and provides the best setting gets a stronger response ...even though the treatments would have been identical! That's placebo in action.

The mind is an incredibly powerful thing. Depression can increase your risk of cardiovascular conditions, for example. People will still get better on placebo even if you TELL them it's placebo. It's really interesting stuff.

People get better, their symptoms wax and wane and people regress to the mean. Sometimes tumours that are almost incurable regress totally, and sometimes people who've been trying to concieve for years get lucky. None of it is down to the Accupuncture. Or the chiropractic. Or the reflexology.