Articles

Ten Ways Chinese Medicine Enhances Fertility

1. Improves ovarian response – better egg production.
2. Increases ovarian and uterine blood flow – better ovarian response. 
3. Helps prepare the uterine lining – increased implantation rates. 
4. Improves sperm count, motility, and morphology. 
5. Lessens the side effects of hormonal treatments.
6. Regulates hormones of the hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads. 
7. Decreases reproductive immunologic reactions.
8. Decreases uterine contractility at implantation.
9. Resolves stress to promote relaxation.
10. Reduces the incidence of miscarriage.

Nourishing Life's Nine Steps to Healing Infertility™

1. Cultivate fertile ground. Reduce toxic load, detoxify the body.
2. Bring in fresh ingredients: Eat well, often, fresh. Breathe.
3. Let it flow. Nourish yourself with body energetics. Meridian flow, acupressure and yoga.
4. Prioritize ease of mind. Settle and learn to focus. Do one thing at a time (OTAT).
5. Practice Active Relaxation™.
6. Pivot from negative mental states, cultivate feelings of well-being.
7. Fertilize your soul. Connect consciously with each moment.
8. Let go of the work of conceiving, making yourself an empty vessel able to receive.
9. Harmonize yourself with the wisdom and rhythms of nature and return to your naturally fertile state.

Fertility: It Does By Itself

Fertility is the natural capability of giving life. It is innate in all living beings. A flower doesn’t need to be told how to take in sunshine or water or nutrients. A seed knows how to sprout and grow. But if you’ve ever tended a garden, you know some plants spring out of the ground tall and bright; others, if the conditions aren’t just right for them, don’t make it.

Fertility is about embracing the natural order of things, embracing the invitation to be in this life. Not everyone will bring another life forward, but we can bring our life forward, and stand full and square in the invitation to be here. Fertility is being at home in our bodies and lives—not changing or fighting—being present as life unfolds in front of us, even if it doesn’t unfold in the way we want it to. Fertility says yes to that life, too.

When we live stress-filled days, eat unhealthy foods, or have imbalances of any kind, we lose that place germinating seeds demonstrate as “it does by itself.” Traditional Chinese Medicine is about making one, wholly integrated, pulsing organism that knows what to do. That same deep wisdom, the innate fertility is part of our essential being. The Chinese call this essence Jing. If you don’t have robust essence, you are not going to be fertile; you’re not going to be reproducing anything—because all reserves are going into base survival. Fertility is vibrating life-making-life, life-touching-life.

We can build a relationship with this life-producing essence, with source, with ourselves. We can bridge the seen with the unseen. All wisdom traditions move us closer to that deeper intelligence: stillness, quiet, openness, and spaciousness. At Nourishing Life we offer practices aimed at containing, preserving essence so we can have the energy to produce whatever we desire. Most of my clients happen to want a baby.

Integrative Medicine

Homeostasis literally means similar, standing still. The dynamic equilibria, regulation and adjustment mechanisms in our human bodies make homeostasis possible. Reproductive hormones, blood sugar, body temperature—are all served by it. When internal systems are healthy, the body naturally moves towards balance. When there is obvious, usually gross, dysfunction, Western doctors intervene using modern diagnostics, surgeries, and medications—often focusing on a single organ or system, according to their specialty. Sometimes those interventions are, unfortunately, irreversible.

Chinese Medicine looks for subtle symptoms of imbalance and stagnation as precursors to dis-ease, and corrects them using acupuncture, herbal remedies and energetic practices that treat the root cause in relationship to the entire system. If one area is compromised, there is compromise in another area—and that can’t be overlooked if health is the goal. The results of Chinese Medicine are sometimes miraculous, and other times it takes time to build up an internal ecosystem that supports life. You gardeners know the painstaking and delightful difference between growing all the different lettuces and elements of a salad, and picking up a ready-made meal to go. The garden takes patience—and it keeps producing, continues to bear fruit.

Nourishing Life respects the advances of the West and the wisdom and a holism of the East and, holding both approaches, goes about removing the blockages and obstacles that keep a person from being in healthy, fertile balance. For life.

Combination with Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)

Using acupuncture in combination with IVF first became popular in April of 2002 when a German study was published showing increased pregnancy rates when acupuncture was used during an IVF procedure. Those of us specializing in women's health saw a tremendous influx of patients wanting to use this exact acupuncture protocol. While we do often use the same protocol as was used in the 2002 study, we have also discovered many additional ways to help the efficacy of western fertility treatments over the course of the last decade.

There are many clinical trials showing the efficacy of acupuncture, relaxation, massage techniques and herbal therapies in combination with ART. But it is important to understand how these methods work. It's not magic and it's usually not immediate. Although acupuncture can be employed at any stage of the fertility process, even during an IVF cycle, Chinese medicine works best three to six months before your IVF or IUI cycle even begins, during the entire process of follicular growth, when egg quality is determined. It is during this time when changes that are made in the woman's health: toxic load, nutritional status and stress levels that can bring about improved positive, even miraculous changes in egg quality, FSH levels, antral follicle count, and endometrial receptivity, just to name a few.

By restoring health using the Nourishing Life method, reestablishing natural reproductive function, and optimizing reproductive markers such as ample menstrual flow, resolution of menstrual pain, and sufficient fertile cervical fluids in advance of any procedural ART intervention, chances on becoming pregnant and having a term gestation greatly increase.

Acupuncture and IVF

Studies show that pregnancy rates increase with the use of acupuncture before egg retrieval and after embryo transfer of your IVF procedure. How acupuncture helps:

• Relaxes the muscles of the uterus helping to control uterine spasms
• Helps to increase circulation of blood to the reproductive system.
• Minimizes the stress response and shifts the body and mind into the rest/digest, feed/breed mode of the parasympathetic nervous system.
• Helps to balance an abnormal hormonal system.
• Minimizes possible overstimulation syndrome and ectopic pregnancy, two common side effects of IVF procedures.

Herbal medicine and IVF

We understand the specific drug herb interactions with medications. Our plan is to help optimize the effects of medications while controlling side effects. If herbal medicines are used for three to six months in advance of your procedure, then herbal medicines are often discontinued just before your procedure.

We work with your treating doctor and nurses, often in direct contact, and not in opposition. Our view is that health and positive outcomes are an expression of working together as your healing team. Many situations can benefit from our help:

• IUI- natural or medicated
• Natural or mini- IVF
• Medicated IVF
• Donor Cycles

Please ask us how we can help you to prepare for your next cycle.

Why Choose Nourishing Life?  Ten Thousand Things.  Simplified

The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to two. Two gives birth to three. Three gives birth to ten thousand things. According to the Tao Te Ching, all phenomenal reality comes from this One. So we go back to One, to integration, to wholeness, to ensure everything we’re birthing is sound.

The Vedic system calls this return, this uniting with it, Yoga. And like the dynamic, minute alterations the body naturally makes in a yogic pose to come to stasis, to standing still, life itself, in balance, naturally produces life…without a to-do list, no striving or driving or stress. That’s homeostasis. Tao. Yoga. Planting a garden that bears fruit. That’s the Nourishing Life program.