IVF Acupuncture
Acupuncture can be used as a support for all stages of IVF, IUI, FET and ICSI treatments.
Having treatment can help with medication side effects such as nausea, fatigue and headaches and to help reduce stress and anxiety.
A recent high-level, systematic review carried out by Zhang et al (2018) and published in the European Journal of Integrative Medicine found that acupuncture significantly improved birth rate.
Scientific studies have shown that acupuncture treatment supports fertility and helps to increase your chances of pregnancy by:
- Regulating fertility hormones
- Increasing blood flow to the reproductive organs
- Improving the thickness of the endometrial lining
- Improve embryo quality and egg production
- Improve sperm quality (sperm count, morphology and motility)
- Enhancing luteal function
- Regulating follicle stimulation hormone (FSH)
- Normalising cortisol and prolactin on IVF medication days
- Promoting embryo implantation
- Strengthen immune system
- Helps to reduce stress and anxiety levels
How IVF acupuncture can help with IVF treatment & other ARTs
To best prepare you for your IVF treatment – it is recommended to have a three month preparation period before commencing IVF or IUI treatment for best results. For women this means working with a minimum of 3 menstrual cycles and for men, three months preparation will help to improve and optimise sperm quality.
Lifestyle and dietary advice will also be given.
If you have already started on an IVF programme there are particular stages that acupuncture can be most useful.
- During the follicular stimulation phase
- After egg collection
- preparing for frozen embryo transfer (FET)
- Pre and post embryo transfer
- During the week before the pregnancy test
- In the early stages of pregnancy to help hold and maintain the pregnancy and help with anxiety and fatigue.
-
I was recommended to have acupuncture when I started having IVF. A friend who had sought fertility support recommended Sarah and I am so pleased she did. With over 20 years of experience and specialising in acupuncture to support fertility treatment, I felt I was in very safe hands from our first session. She even did a home visit after my embryo transfer. I am now happily 23 weeks pregnant and still enjoying my acupuncture treatments with Sarah. I am so grateful to have been under her care during what has been a very challenging and emotional time. She is an amazing practitioner and her patients know they are in the very best of hands.
I have specialised in acupuncture for fertility, IVF, ART and pregnancy for many years. In 1997 and 1998 I interned with Zita West at her acupuncture antenatal clinic at Warwick Hospital and again with Sarah Budd in 2000 at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, where Sarah was the first midwife to set up an acupuncture service for pregnant women in the NHS. During 1999-2002 I ran a multi-bed fertility and pregnancy clinic at the College of Traditional Acupuncture, Leamington Spa.
Whilst running my clinics, I have lectured at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, on acupuncture during pregnancy and ran workshops for trainee midwives at Oxford Brookes University, on the use of moxibustion for helping to turn breech babies and on acupuncture for antenatal and postnatal conditions.
As a certified Tui Na practitioner (Chinese therapeutic massage based on the acupuncture points and meridian channels), I have found it very effective to combine both acupuncture and Tui Na techniques to assist my fertility clients.
I have been a contributor to Pregnancy and Birth magazine and to the National Childbirth Trust publications (NCT) and was a member of the Acupuncture forChildbirth Team (ACT) Oxfordshire.
For all appointments or enquiries, please call me on 07485 042302
or email: enquiries@sarahbrownacupuncture.co.uk
CLINIC LOCATIONS
