Following nine years of unsuccessful efforts to have a baby, Jackie Apuzzo, 37 years old social worker, finally visited an acupuncturist on the advice of a friend. After two months of acupuncture treatments and a regimen of Chinese herbs, she became pregnant. Now 16-week pregnant, she is still undergoing acupuncture treatment. Her baby is due in December.
Doctors say that a growing number of women who have been unable to get pregnant are seeking out alternatives such as acupuncture. Demand for the traditional Chinese method is so great that an increasing number of fertility doctors now are collaborating with acupuncturists. But, more research is needed on acupuncture's effectiveness.
The acupuncture treatment may be attributed to a German study published in 2002 in Fertility and Sterility. The study, led by Dr. Wolfgang Paulus at the University of Ulm, found that 42% of women receiving acupuncture just before and after an assisted-reproductive therapy, such as IVF, became pregnant; that compared with 26% of patients who got pregnant with assisted-reproductive treatments but who received no acupuncture therapy. Later that year, Dr. Raymond Chang and colleagues at Cornell University's medical school in New York published a paper in the same journal, describing several ways acupuncture might actually improve a woman's chances of conceiving: relaxation, regulating reproductive hormones and improving the lining of the uterus, where the embryo needs to be implanted before it can develop.
Deming Huang, an acupuncturist at Stanford University's Center for Integrative Medicine in Palo Alto, said patient interest began to rise about the same time. At the Stanford clinic, more women began asking their doctors for referrals to acupuncturists. (Source: Elena Conis, The Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2005).