Wouldn’t it be great if we could disconnect our brains from our bodies and the realities of what we experience on a daily basis, just disappeared….. Wouldn’t trying for a baby, be so much easier to deal with. All you would have to do is your IVF cycle, take your suppression meds, stimulate the be jesis out of your ovaries and then Waaala, loads of eggs to fertilise … Transfer two beautiful embryos. And two weeks later, a positive pregnancy test.
Ammmm. But life being life…. And one little big thing…. It never works out that way.
So last week, I got a call from a new client enquiring about what we do here in Aculife. I must admit, Im always a little nervous when talking to new clients over the phone. I prefer to meet with them in person so that we can both get to know each other. When its over the phone its so easy to miss the subtilise of body language and where the tone of a conversation is going or shouldn’t go. She was lovely over the phone asking all the right questions, asking about our experience with infertility, my training, and then the one question that I just never know how to answer. What are your success rates.
I was in a particular ‘the world is a wonderful happy place’ mood that morning, and jokingly said. I don’t get people pregnant im never there when that part happens…. It was not a great answer in hindsight….. I didn’t need to see body language to know we we’re now in an awkward stalemate.
But what is the right answer to this question. What is success here… I do know, for my clients of course, it’s a positive pregnancy test and nine months later a baby in their arms… But for me, it’s any 1% improvement we can make within their reproductive system… adding all these little 1%s over the next few months and hopefully creating an environment for implantation to occur, then a healthy positive result and 9 months later your baby. Acupuncture can be really hard for some people to evaluate, how do they know its working for them. Unlike a GP, where you get your bloods done and 2 weeks later you have a result, acupuncture is a much more subtle, cumulative approach. It takes a couple of sessions over a couple of months. I’m normally given 3 months or 6 sessions to get people pregnant and then sometimes people will give up. And feel it hasn’t worked. Usually because they goal is the positive result. Which is the absolute result for both of us. So we are both on the same page, however our time frames are a little different.
Acupuncture doesn’t get people pregnant. I wish it did, I’d have queues out the door if that were the case. Its the couple that get each other pregnant. What Im trying to do is find out why thats not happening and fix it.
When you truly look into a case, where a couple are having problems conceiving. There is so much involved. Sometimes I question how we, as human beings are actually on this planet. From the physical aspect, emotional well being and then all the others stresses of life on top. Between family and friends moving on, having babies… And constantly asking: Any news…… Any news…. No seriously go on, Any news…. To you’d want to hurry on there.. And then finally at the last of your friends wedding day, after years of tying for your baby, a few drinks… and …. Jesus boy… I’d say your firing blanks….. Massive pause… An awkward laugh… And in your head your thinking…Nice one buddy, you have no idea the hell we have been through…..
Diagnosis is a very very tricky thing.. That’s why there is soooooo much ‘unexplained infertility’ out there…. Of course there are blood tests that can be done, that will give a general overall fertility NCT, but 9 times out o 10, all will come back normal. And you will be told to keep trying for another 3 to 6 months. And as you go out the door of your Doctors office, your told, ‘You need to relax, more, have a little fun’….. BANG!!!!!! as your turn to look at your doctor, the rage finally cracks you in two, you leap towards your doctor chocking him and singing to him in a sweet lulibie – Your the one who needs to relax boyo…. squeezing his neck tighter and tighter…. (this is all in your head of course)… But your feeling soooooooo much better now…
For your man, the main areas to look out for, are the sperm factor. If you’ve been trying for over 12 months, you both should be getting checked out. Its hard to believe this, but 40% or all the cases I work with are male factor problems, and to be honest one of the most frustrating areas of my work… It’s so frustrating, I mean beyond belief…. I would think, 50% of the time when I ask to see the men’s sperm analysis I find something that’s been completely misread… Recently it was, you have a few slow swimmers…. But your fine.. Keep trying… A few, SERIOUSLY…. 85% were either not moving at all or very slow… 15% were rapid…. Dude.. You are infertility, you are the problem…. To a 1% morphology (the shape of the sperm) where it needs to be a minimum….. of 4% but because he had 95 million count he was told he was grand….. Dude… Again… You are infertile…… For those two cases, a so called unexplained infertile misdiagnosed…. in just one week. Btw I’m not a doctor…. But even I understand the basics….. So my advice to you is….. When you see the sperm analysis the numbers you are seeing as normal… are the minimum results required… It’s a ‘D’ in his exams…. you want all ‘A”s here…. So from the following grid:
If your trying for a baby naturally ….. you want over 50 million count for an A and 8% morphology. With only 5% of my patients being men and 40% of all fertility issues being men, its easy to see how success rates won’t be good when your only dealing with 50% of the equation, and that 50% are not in my clinic.
For women, one of the most common reasons I see for unexplained infertility is what we can blood deficiency and blood stasis. This is basically the in uterine blood that initially supports an implantation 7 days after ovulation, or 2-3 days post an IVF cycle.
Symptoms for blood stasis are, brown or dark bleeding, spotting pre or post your period. Now it can be through you whole cycle but is more commonly a spotting issue.
So image we have two lakes, the first lake, has a brown layer of mud on it, with flies floating around it, stagnant water and a tescos trolley in it. So lets go fishing there, and we catch a couple of fish. And we take them home.
Now image another lake with beautiful clear water, where fresh water flows down from the mountains. We spend the day fishing here again and catch a similar amount of fish. So…. which fish would you like to eat… Those from lake A with the stagnant smelly water, or those from Lake B with the clear crisp flowing water..
Now lets go a little deeper, if I was to put a fertilised embroy into similar environments which one do you think has a better chance of surviving, implanting and resulting in a positive pregnancy. Of courses, its the environment with good blood flow, nutrients and proteins to support the implantation and a healthy pregnancy. For couples, there are so many times where fertilisation happens, where an embryo develops over the following 7 to 9 days and implantation doesn’t happen. This is such a common occurrence in my experience. Over the next 3 to 4 days you have your period and you work through another failed month, trying to figure out what went wrong in this cycle. But what you don’t know is that fertilisation did occur, the reason was the environment wasn’t conducive to implantation. And unfortunately there are no blood tests your doctor can do to test for this.
Next we have Blood deficiency and its a little different from blood stasis, in the image below you can see a goldfish bowl, now lets take all the oxygen out of the water, take out all the fish food and any plant life from the bowl. What do you think happens to our little goldfish?
A similar situation can occur in the uterus, where the nutrients required for a pregnancy to continue are not available. So it doesn’t really matter how many embryos you transfer. If the environment is not conducive to supporting life, it won’t happen. So my goal here is to resolve these issue and create a wonderful environment for your beautiful embryos, through acupuncture and nutritional supplement support we can normally resolve this over 5-6 sessions.
So these two issues are the most common factors that I work with. Improving the quality of sperm and creating a beautiful healthy environment for implantation and a safe pregnancy. Easy Piecy…….. 🙂
If you have any questions do give us a call any time. And remember, there is no such thing as ‘Unexplained Infertility’ just ‘Poor Diagnosis’. Talk to you soon. Gordon