Demystifying Acupuncture for Fertility

Hi, I’m Lisa Stack the CNY Fertility Support Coordinator.  Today we’re going to be speaking with Donald about acupuncture for fertility and all its benefits. 
Donald:  Hello, my name is Donald Clarke.  I’d want to take this opportunity to say to hello to some people and kind of give you an introduction as to what we do here at CNY Healing Arts.  I’m an acupuncturist and I’ve been in the field for close to 11 years now.  I’ve seen just about everything that most people can imagine.  One of the most rewarding and challenging thing that I’ve seen is really dealing with fertility issues.  At this time, I wanted to take away some of the myth and some of the wives tales associated with it.  So, let me first start by saying at CNY Healing Arts what we do is we do a combination of acupuncture, a combination of Chinese herbal medicine, as well as some body technique, as well as other techniques such as Moxibustion, which is burning herbs on the body, and a few other things: Gua sha, “cupping”.  Cupping is placing glass jars on the skin to realign muscle tissue.  Gua sha is great for the skin with a rice spoon to alleviate internal heat associated with some of the side effects of fertility medications.  You have to understand you’re going from 0 to 60 in a short period of time, so it’s like burning rubber on a car or burning tires on a car.  You’re going very quickly, very fast.  We need to help balance that with our treatments.  
A typical treatment lasts anywhere between a half an hour to forty-five minutes.  What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get the person, whether it be the husband or the wife or the partner in as soon as possible.  The longer that we have to actually build up follicles, increase sperm count, the better the outcome is for the cycle.  So, we try to get people in as soon as possible.  What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to build follicles, follicular development and realigning, and simply changing lifestyles in the process.  At the end of it, we really want someone to not only have a child or multiple children, but to have learned so much along the way, to become a much healthier person and someone who has really taken control of their own health. It’s not only Chinese medicine that I practice, I also try to give advice and tips along the way on ways to better themselves and their lives and their family around them.  That’s part of the process here.  A Typical treatment lasts between 30 minutes to 45 minutes.  It can range anywhere from one week for one treatment, right up to two, maybe three months out.  That’s when we start to get a little bit more in-depth, complicated treatment protocol which will involve a little bit of herbal medicine, a little bit of body work, as well as straight up acupuncture.  It’s very important to know that everybody is an individual.  We don’t just lump people in and say, “Everyone has to come in for four months otherwise it won’t work”.  That’s not the case at all.  We understand that everyone has individual needs and nobody is the same.  Everyone is completely unique.  So we make a point of treating them as a unique person.  Each individual’s treatment plan is going to vary.  It’s not going to be the same. 
The first step would be for someone to come in and say, I’m so and so, this is what I’m dealing with, and what can you do for me?  We would go through an intake with them, a pretty in-depth conversation to determine where they’re at, where they are in their cycle, and what our next move would be.  After that, we would start treatment.  We would get you in pretty readily.  If we aren’t able to see you here at the Syracuse facility (which I failed to say that I am in the Syracuse office), we would set you up with an appointment, whether it be in Albany or in Rochester.  We also have recommendations throughout the state that you could go and receive quality care.  
Nothing really is too difficult for us.  We are pretty versed in a lot of infertility issues or fertility issues.  Don’t feel as if you’re beyond repair, because that’s not the case at all.  Some simple treatments really help the body to respond quite well.  Often enough, acupuncture and Chinese medicine come at the body in which it has never seen that type of medicine.  I guess what I’m trying to say is that the body is very sensitive and reacts very quickly to treatment.  When you come at it from a different angle which the body has never experienced that type of work, generally it responds very favorably.  
The basis of Chinese medicine is to work on the body’s energy.  What we’re trying to do is trying to nourish a person’s energy.  I think a lot of people think that I am stimulating my own energy and giving it to the person to help them heal.  That’s not the case at all.  What I’m doing is using the person’s own energy to help heal themselves.  I think that most people would be surprised by how much energy they have.  They may be a consultant of some sort, or in finance, they could be a physician, or in law and not even realize that they have immense quantities of very good energy in the body.  So it’s important that we also direct people towards yoga or some meditation so they can really tap into it.  Most people have an incredible amount of their own energy that isn’t going to waste, it’s keeping them healthy, but if they were able to tap into it a little bit, they could be amazing healers themselves.  I see a lot of that every day.  I see somebody who has this this amazing healing energy locked inside of them; they just aren’t aware of or haven’t taken the time to really discover.  It’s important that people read a little bit more about it.  They attend classes, energy classes.  The one thing that I really try to get people to do is I try to get them at the end of the day, just to take an hour away and sit in a dark room or outside with no music, no TV, no conversation, and just listen and just decompress.  All day long we have stimulus, just stimulus coming in from every angle, from the internet, co-workers or family members.  All day long, we’re just being bombarded with stimulus so we don’t take the appropriate time to decompress.  If we don’t unload that it just unloads into the next day, and the next day, and the next day.  I think that’s part of the fundamental problems with illness is that we don’t shed a lot of the stimulus that we need to shed and to just let our bodies be free.  
In the process of our healing journey, through Chinese medicine, it’s not just acupuncture; I think a lot of people think that, it’s not.  It’s a combination of many things, really.  That’s so important for people to realize.  I think some people are afraid of needles and that’s understandable.  I remember the first time I had acupuncture.  I was horribly afraid of acupuncture because I hadn’t read anything about it, and I was going on someone’s recommendation.  The truth of the matter is, it’s very relaxing.  Most people, I’d say eighty percent of my clients that I see, they fall asleep during treatment.  I have to wake them up at the end of treatment or I have to come out and get a nurse to come in and wake them up because they’re in such a deep sleep.  For people that have real difficulty with sleeping or with any kind of anxiety issue, acupuncture is very good at bringing them “down”.  When you bring somebody “down”, the blood vessels dilate, everything moves so smooth.  I think a lot of hormone imbalances balance.  It’s a very nice, calming treatment.  I encourage people to call, to read.  If anyone has any questions, talk to me, email me, call me.  I’d love to chat with you.  It was a pleasure.  Thank you.