In this Video:
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How stress impacts infertility
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What does acupuncture do for infertility
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A study looking at infertility treatment success rate in individuals with high stress levels
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How acupuncture affects individuals with high stress levels after treatment
Stress is huge, when it comes to fertility for several reasons. Cortisol production gets increased which can throw off your other hormones. Stress alone, your body is just going to be hyper stimulated, and in my opinion sometimes that hyper stimulation of the nervous system is shown in studies, is what can keep the blood flow from going to the uterus. There are actually studies showing that, that hyper stimulation of the nervous system can cause that.
What does acupuncture do to help that? Well, acupuncture increases endorphins and it also increases serotonin, which relaxes your body, and then relaxing your body, creating more circulation and blood flow, which it also does, get some more blood flow to every organ in the body. That's in a sense, how it works. I so wish people would start combining Western medicine and Eastern medicine together because it is so incredibly effective for stress and as a lot of people know, going through trying to get pregnant, there are a lot of medications that they're not allowed to take, and so we can offset a lot of times what may be happening because they can't use that certain medication. I like that a lot.
If I was oversimplifying, as I'm listening to you talk about stress, and how acupuncture can affect it, I keep thinking if my body is stressed out, and for lack of a better word, in a survival mode, it's not gonna say this is the time to get pregnant, and with acupuncture, you fill it up with endorphins and better feeling hormones and chemicals, the body is starting to relax and it's saying okay, now, I might get pregnant because I feel no threat, I feel no danger?
Absolutely. There was a study in 2001 in the University of San Diego California, they examined the success rates of women undergoing Western fertility treatments. The study concluded women with higher rates of stress, were 93 percent less likely to become pregnant, and achieve a live birth. You can see how incredibly important it is to listen to your body, be kind to your body, calm your body down, do what you can, to be in a good state, so that we can get you there. That's really powerful. Jenn, thank you for sharing that study with us.
Do you have people that come into your office, that don't even realize that they are stressed and then you start doing the treatment with them, and then it hits them how stressed they have been?
Yes, it happens on two levels. So absolutely yes. The people who I find that really don't realize it, are people who are really good in high-stress situations. You take people who maybe are like trauma workers, EMTs, ER doctors, ER nurses, psychologists, things like that, who are in high-stress jobs. They just have no idea, what even happened to them the first treatment, because they're just so relaxed. Also, when people are going through treatment series and then they decide to take a break, which normally we like to maintain, you maintain your car, you maintain your teeth, you know it is a maintenance thing to keep your body balanced. But sometimes you need to take a break, and then they'll be on that break and say I had no idea how much this was helping me. Everybody is different as far as how they react to it, but many times more than not, at least 80% of the time, they really feel a difference. It's very helpful, it's helped along with anything else they might be doing. That's amazing.
