What are the advantages of using acupuncture when treating a patient with PCOS? PCOS is both an endocrinologic and a metabolic disorder. The patient can present with polycystic ovaries, hyperandrogenism, hirsutism, and hyperinsulinemia. Furthermore, PCOS patients have a hard time conceiving.
Let’s start
One reason is anovulation. Also, the egg quality is quite often compromised as there’s too much testosterone in the follicle. This functions as an anti-estrogen and for that reason, the eggs lack proper nourishment. In actuality, the PCOS population experiences miscarriage over the non-PCOS population.
Acupuncture and herbal medicine are ‘regulators. They reduce what is in surplus and nutritional supplement what is diminished. In the PCOS patient, we would like to decrease the testosterone milieu, increase the follicular estrogen, regulate the menstrual cycle and help facilitate conception. Acupuncture and herbs frequently accomplish this objective.
TCM
Another aim of the practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine will be to council patients about lifestyle. If a PCOS patient is morbidly obese, she might face gestational diabetes, preeclampsia or eclampsia. This can cause severe health issues for mother and baby. Through lifestyle counselling, it’s often possible to assist this sort of patient shed weight.
Obesity will also raise estrogen levels that can, over time, contribute to cancer in addition to contribute to infertility. The hormones have to be balanced. Too much estrogen is as detrimental as insufficient. Via the regulatory effects of acupuncture and herbs, weight can be lost, hormones may be rebalanced, menses can modulate, and conception may occur.
I am not suggesting that acupuncture and herbal medicine is the holy-grail. It can help some people, occasionally; like IVF. What are the advantages of using acupuncture when treating a patient with endometriosis? Endometriosis is a pro-inflammatory cytokine disease. To put it differently, there are inflammatory factors causing havoc in the reproductive system.
Though endometriosis is a disease which occurs outside the uterus, the inflammatory processes make their way into the uterine cavity altering the lining and the environment. This in and of itself is the key biological factor of infertility.
Physical issues
There are physical issues also. For instance, tubal adhesions can happen which makes conception through intercourse or IUI hopeless. IVF is crucial in those cases. Many patients with endometriosis have also triggered Nk cells. These cells are supposed to attack cancer cells from the uterus. But in endometriosis patients, these Nk cells frequently mistake the embryo to get a cancer cell and attack and kill it. Even after laparoscopic surgery, the patient can STILL have endometriosis.
Here’s why: endometriotic lesions have different colors; brown, red, purple, power-burn, etc.. This informs the surgeon”that is endo – resect it”. The issue is, some endometriosis tissue looks exactly like normal tissue. So, the surgeon can not even find this tissue, let alone eliminate it. In my head, even following a laparoscopy, it needs to be assumed that the individual still might have endometriosis.
Did you know?
In endometriosis cases (after laparoscopy always!) Our purpose is to try and decrease the inflammatory processes that may still be manifesting in the uterus and also to attempt to regulate immune function. One protein that’s a marker for poor fertility outcomes and is frequently seen in endometriosis patients is BCL6. BCL6 in some medical circles is thought to cause infertility at the endometriosis individual. By regulation of immunological function and preventing inflammation, BCL6 may be down-regulated and the capacity to conceive will be improved.
What are the advantages of using acupuncture when treating a patient with sperm anomalies? A normal semen analysis looks at count, quantity, concentration, morphology and motility and ph. They all come back normal and the wife is 100% normal and she is 27 years old and they can not conceive? Why not? One potential explanation is that a’hidden pathology’ that’s often not analyzed for. The pathology is sperm DNA fragmentation. The common consensus among reproductive endocrinologists is the only barrier to fertilization brought on by DNA fragmentation is that the sperm can not penetrate the egg.
Good to know
The individual is treated through ICSI (the sperm is injected directly into the egg to engender fertilization.) Often these situations end up in non-pregnancy or miscarriage. It’s, in my estimation, not a good idea to force a poor-quality sperm into an egg and then expect a good outcome. Interestingly, a number of those cases do end up with live births. But many don’t. Acupuncture can strongly improve hemodynamics into the testes, delivery hormones, oxygen, nutrient and electrolytes. Acupuncture also helps alleviate to excretion of debris or dead cells in the testes. This can improve testicular function and significantly reduce sperm DNA fragmentation.
Taking antioxidants is really important in such cases as well because there’s a tendency in these guys to have high levels of oxidative stress in the testicular environment that can significantly harm sperm. What are the advantages of using acupuncture to ease stress in couples encounter fertility challenges? Stress is an intriguing and uncertain issue in regards to infertility cases. Yes; all parties involved are worried. They want a child and can not conceive. But does stress actually result in infertility? I’m not sure.
Here’s why
In any war zone, in any region of the world, in any time in history, the most horrible, stressful, unspeakable things happen. But kids are born in such war zones every day. I know for certain that stress can negatively affect sperm count but I’m not certain about the impact on fertility in the female patient. Nonetheless, acupuncture is excellent at mitigating anxiety, which, at the very least, will make the couple feel better, stronger, healthier, and more capable of managing the tough journey ahead.
What are the advantages of using acupuncture when treating a patient with low ovarian reserve and poor egg quality? Acupuncture is extremely effective at improving blood circulation to anywhere in the body which the practitioner wants. For instance, if a patient has’tennis elbow’ (lateral epicondylitis) and you add needles near and in the elbow, it is going to signal healing immunological substances into the site to fix the damage. So is the case with ovaries. We can stimulate blood to the ovaries directly stimulating delivery of oxygen, nutrients, electrolytes and hormones while also eliminating dead cells in the ovaries. This may not, under any conditions provide a girl with more eggs can, often, improve egg quality. This is quite important. So, if the egg quality is poor but a blastocyst is formed, the move will happen, and pregnancy won’t ensue. If through herbal or acupuncture medication, egg quality is enhanced, there’ll be a noticeable increase in the odds of a successful outcome.
