In November of 1998, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a 47.3% increase in visits to alternative medicine practitioners, from 427 million in 1990 to 629 million in 1997 - a number that exceeded total visits to all US primary care physicians. So if you are one of several million people who believe that there are other models of health, read on.

Chinese medicine is over 4,000 years old and is practiced world-wide. But it is still relatively new to the Western world and does not fit well into the scientific model of the randomized, controlled, double blind studies on which the medical community rely. However, studies have been done and more are underway Below are a few studies that suggest that acupuncture improves the rate of successful pregnancies:

• Role of acupuncture in the treatment of female infertility (doc)

• Influence of acupuncture on the pregnancy rate (pdf)

• Reduction of blood flow impedance in the uterine arteries (doc)

• The Endocrine System and the Female Cycle (doc)

We do have 4,000 years of "anecdotal" and clinical use that has demonstrated its effectiveness for many conditions, including those associated with infertility and pregnancy.

Acupuncture is based on an "energetic" model of the human body. The flow of energy, like the flow of blood in the vascular system, circulates through subtle channels that reach every cell in the body and works in conjunction with the vascular and nervous systems. A trained acupuncturist uses specific points on the channels to restore the flow or balance of energy to heal or to maintain health.

These channels are responsible for the flow of energy into and throughout the major organ systems, moving blood and carrying nourishment, and transmit "messages" to and from the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system.

"Acupuncture points are believed to stimulate the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) to release chemicals into the muscles, spinal cord, and brain. These chemicals either change the experience of pain or release other chemicals, such as hormones, that influence the body's self-regulating systems. The biochemical changes may stimulate the body's natural healing abilities and promote physical and emotional well-being."

~ National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, quoted in National Institutes of Health Consensus Panel. Acupuncture. National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Statement (Bethesda, MD, November 3-5, 1997). Office of Alternative Medicine and Office of Medical Applications of Research. Bethesda: National Institutes of Health, 1997.

There are any number of conditions that may accompany a biomedical diagnosis of infertility, such as anovulation, endometriosis, fibroids, polycyctic ovaries, thin uterine lining or elevated FSH. While this information is useful to an acupuncturist, there is not a one-to-one correlation to the Chinese medical diagnosis. Any of the above conditions would represent an imbalance for which your acupuncturist would identify and design the appropriate treatment.

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