Acupuncture in Pregnancy

Acupuncture is a well defined and proven system which originated from the china and is utilized in every corner of the world to restore, support and maintain a great health of women so that she is able to conceive more easily and carry pregnancy up to the full term with the minimum probability of abortion.

In conjunction with needling, moxibustion and electro acupuncture is also used in selected patients if need be. Chinese Acupuncture Treatment for Pregnancy is one of the very crucial components in approach towards the health and signifies illness as the sign that the body is lacking behind getting the essential components. The accurate degree and pattern of body imbalance is different in each individual case.

The doctor’s ability lies in obtaining the accurate nature of disharmony and coming up with the highly effective acupuncture points, according to the patient’s requirement.

How Chinese Acupuncture Treatment for Pregnancy is done?

1. During acupuncture, the patient lies on the bed comfortably.
2. The patient does not need any special preparation before acupuncture.
3. Locations of acupuncture points on her body points are cleaned by alcohol swab.
4. Very fine needles are swiftly inserted on acupuncture points.
5. If needed, few acupuncture needles are stimulated with the help of electro stimulator for 10
   minutes
6. Needles are left in place and the patient keeps lying for another half an hour.
7. During this session patients normally sleep.
8. Needles are taken out after half an hour and discarded.
9. No special after care is needed.
10. Patient can leave clinic after 10-15 minutes.
11. Patient should come three times a week for better results.
12. If thrice a week is not possible then it should be repeated whenever possible because each sitting of acupuncture is beneficial for better results.

Supportive Clinical Trials

Out of which 23 women completed the full course with 14 pregnancies (61%) resulting to 4 miscarriages & 10 live births. The result was encouraging.

Choi E et al, Park JJ, Shin S, Kang M. Acupuncture in Korea treated an unexplained infertility. J Altern Complement Med. 2010 Feb; 16(2): 193-8.

A randomized controlled trial with 240 women with hormonal infertility, 160 got acupuncture and 80 got medications. The pregnancy rate was 65% in the acupuncture group and 45% in the medication group, a statistically significant difference (p<0.5)

Yang JR, Ma YY, Liu YL, Wang HL, Liu Z Controlled study on acupuncture for treatment of endocrine functional infertility. Zhongguo Zhenjiu. 2005; 25(5): 299-300

A randomised controlled trial that evaluated the effect of acupuncture on reproductive outcome in 273 women undergoing IVF concluded that acupuncture on the day of embryo transfer significantly improves the reproductive outcome of IVF compared to no acupuncture group.

Westergaard LG et al. Acupuncture on the day of embryo transfer: a prospective randomized trial. Fertil Steril 2006;85:1341-6

A study that looked at whether changes in serum cortisol and prolactin are affected by acupuncture in IVF patients. In all 67 infertile women undergoing IVF were grouped as controls ( IVF with no acupuncture) and treated ( IVF with acupuncture ). Both cortisol and prolactin levels were higher in acupuncture group on IVF days 7,8,9,11,12 and 13 compared with controls.

The researchers concluded that there appears to be beneficial regulation of cortisol and prolactin with acupuncture during IVF treatment.

Magarelli PC et al. Changes in serum cortisol and prolactin associated with acupuncture during controlled ovarian hyperstimulation in women undergoing in vitro fertilisation – embryo transfer treatment.