Nicole Tomlinson: For millions of Americans having a baby and starting a family is as natural as life itself. However, when they feel road blocks can found themselves unable to conceive, many turn to IVF and other not so natural solution. What if, there was a more natural way to help mother nature along? We are here today with Kirsten Karchmer, who is going to guide us through the process of Acupuncture For Fertility.
This is Kirsten and she is going to tell us how acupuncture can assist in the treatment of infertility. Hi Kirsten!
Kirsten Karchmer: Hi, how are you?
Nicole Tomlinson: Very good. Now in regards to fertility, who is a prime candidate to undergo treatment for infertility?
Kirsten Karchmer: That's a good question. We divide it into three categories. In our practice, we specialize in infertility, in ovulation disorders and miscarriage prevention. There are very patients who are not a good candidate for infertility treatments in general. What we find is that the patients who have the least success rates are those who have very large uterine fibroids or who have some kind of blockage of the fallopian tube. Those things need to be surgically removed. Acupuncture is not going to remove those things.
Nicole Tomlinson: Right. Once we decide, okay, I am a good candidate, how do we start?
Kirsten Karchmer: Well, what happens is this, first you come for a consultation with a licensed acupuncture. In that consultation, the acupuncturer should take about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to first of all explain what he or she does and answer all of your questions and then do a comprehensive health history. When we are treating infertility, what our goal is, is to understand why do you have what you have? Why does this person have infertility who is 34-years-old, this person who doesn't have infertility, who is the same age and has a similar health. Many problems can cause infertility. It can be the blood not moving in the uterus, there can be an inability to make enough blood so the uterine lining then doesn't build up thick and expert implantation to occur. So there are many, many different reasons why someone might be having a hard time either getting pregnant or ovulating or staying pregnant and we are trying to sight that on the first appointment.
Alyssa: I tried on our own for close to six months and had no success and then we went to our doctor and I had all sorts of hormonal imbalances and things so I started taking clomade and doing IUIs (Intra-Uterine Inseminations) for several months and none of that worked; I was found to have mild to moderate endometriosis and so I had a lot of that cleared out with the surgery and that could have been a factor, it was keeping us from getting pregnant.
Marla: Over a year's time, I wasn't menstruating regularly. They didn't believe I was ovulating, I didn't believe I was ovulating. They, about I guess a year and a few months have prescribed a drug called clomade, against even though taking ovulation protector kit, it wasn't coming out positive so again I wasn't believing that I was ovulating and the medicine was having a negative impact. So I decided I was not going to do any kind of medication, but if I couldn't get pregnant naturally in some way then I was -- then maybe that wasn't the path for us.
Nicole Tomlinson: So once we have the consultation and all of those things are worked out then, what do we do? Do we go on the table and start getting the pins?
Kirsten Karchmer: On the second appointment, that's when we start doing acupuncture.
Nicole Tomlinson: Is it instantaneous? I go home and I can get pregnant?
Kirsten Karchmer: Actually, it takes a quite a bit of time, what we are trying to do is regulate your menstrual cycle. So the goal of the treatment for infertility is not to get someone pregnant because just getting pregnant doesn't finish the job. What our goal is, is to help people to first get as healthy as possible. To get their body functioning at the highest capacity possible. After their body is functioning in high capacity, we regulate menstrual cycle. When someone is very healthy and her menstrual cycle is regular, the side-effect should be that they should get pregnant easily and stay pregnant. The end goal is a happy, healthy baby.
Nicole Tomlinson: So what we are really doing is we are not focusing on getting pregnant. We are focusing on getting healthy.
Marla: Exactly! I had a friend who told me several years back that she had tried for at least two years to get pregnant and nothing had worked in terms of medication, and I think she even tried IVF. One of the things she did was acupuncture. So that kind of just stuck in my mind, I remembered that, and so then I looked around here and within two months of regular treatments twice a week, with the herbs that they prescribed as well, my cycle started regulating and I started to ovulating, which was a big deal for us and then within two months period time, I got pregnant.
Alyssa: Started coming about 3-4 months before we did our second In-Vitro twice a week and it relaxed me so much and sort of made me calmer about the whole thing and well it was a very stressful medical procedure to go through, I sort of just had a different outlook with it and felt that the doctors and the medicine went through their part and the acupuncture helped me stay very calm and relaxed on my part, which I would like to think was a really big help and having in all work and keeping me healthy enough to have a pregnancy and have a baby and it worked and now I have a eight-month old baby.
Nicole Tomlinson: So we are looking at a lot of unusual things in here. Do any of these herbs assist in the treatment of infertility?
Kirsten Karchmer: In our clinic, we use acupuncture and herbal medicine and nutritional consulting and life-style consulting. The goal of herbal medicine and Chinese medicine is to try to make a formula for patients that meet them exactly where they are currently today in their menstrual cycles. During each week of a menstrual cycle, something different is occurring.
Nicole Tomlinson: So take us to someone who is maybe a day 14 in her cycle, who is coming in to seek treatment for infertility. What herbs would you use?
Kirsten Karchmer: This is a problem because when somebody is coming in for ovulation problem. When they say, oh I am having ovulation sorts, have polycystic ovarian disease or I am not ovulating or I am ovulating too early or too late, the causes of each one of those individual problems are different.
Nicole Tomlinson: Once the whole process is going through and we have gotten the acupuncture for a while, how long do you say it takes to conceive?
Kirsten Karchmer: Once the patients who come to us, they are feeling very healthy and their health has been restored and their menstrual cycle is regulated and their basal body temperature falls within the parameters that we are looking for, people are getting very close to being ready for pregnancy.
Nicole Tomlinson: Do you recommend that they not try while we are trying to remedy the problem or we are trying to really get our menstrual cycle back on track?
Kirsten Karchmer: We do recommend that they wait three months before they try to conceive. Probably acupuncture can get a person's body strong enough to conceive within 5 or 6 or 7 weeks but it's really just putting a band-aid on like getting ensured as best as possible but it's not strong enough to necessarily sustain the pregnancy and carry the baby through. So we really want people to deliver healthy baby.
Marla: I can't say for sure and then I can't say that that is exactly variable that cause the pregnancy, but I did see quite a bit of impact that it had had on my body as compared to any kind of medicine that I have been taking, any kind of other doctor's appointment that I had and so acupuncture is the only thing that I started to regulate my cycle and then I was also very hopeful. This is hopeful, I can feel positive things in my body, I was having less aches and pains, I was sleeping better at night, so I saw other things in addition to just the menstrual cycle changing.
Nicole Tomlinson: When mother nature needs just a
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