Acupuncture and conception,
Yin or Yang?
Conception : For a woman to conceive she needs to be more yin, which is nurturing, creative and going with the flow. Women are designed to embrace the water element and to move through life with grace and ease. Now in today’s society to get ahead in the work force and keep up with men, women have become more Yang. This means that we can achieve financial and career success, independence and accolades but in many cases it costs us a portion of our health, in particular our reproductive health.
When we keep pushing ourselves to continually strive and climb the workforce ladder we cause our stress levels to rise which keeps the body on high alert with cortisol and other stress hormones streaming through the body. Cortisol can impact our sex lives as it has an effect on the body when you’re under stress to decrease your sexual response. That’s because cortisol restrains all bodily functions that are not key to your survival when stressed. The immune system, digestion, growth, and reproduction will all be affected and suppressed and the menstrual cycle can be delayed or even stopped.
“After all, from an evolutionary standpoint it would be unsafe to carry
a child if your own well-being were in jeopardy.”
Alisa Vitti
When we are stressed the body turns fertility off as it brings all the blood to the extremities as a sympathetic nervous system response to stress. Stress depletes our Jing, a term in Chinese medicine that refers to our essence which we store in our kidneys and leads to fertile eggs and healthy sperm. We need to protect our kidneys by keeping warm, eating warm foods etc. In ancient China they believed that you shouldn’t wash your hair during your period as the cold would get in and damage your essence.
Therefore, in order to conceive we need to reduce stress.
Yes we can have it all, just realistically we can’t have it all at once. So when trying to conceive it’s best to reduce all other stresses in your life, career, family, money etc and focus on your goal.
Acupuncture has been around for over 2,000 years and approaches a woman’s menstrual cycle as following natural rhythms of Yin, Yang, and Qi. Yin cannot exist without its partner Yang and to be healthy we require a balance of both. Acupuncture helps to balance the yin and yang, therefore benefitting the chances of conception. It can also help to reduce the stress reaction, aid sleep which is vital to good health and enable the body to relax.
Regular Acupuncture has been known to regulate the menstrual cycle and prepare the body for conception along with naturopathic lifestyle advice, nutrition, emotional support and other factors all of which your acupuncturist will help you with. I suggest to my patients to allow at least 3 months of treatment to begin with so we can really can really focus on their menstrual cycle and overall health.
Then it’s up to you and your partner to do your part and timing is very important. Plan to have intercourse during your peak fertility window every other day as sperm lives for 72 hours in the woman’s body so sex everyday isn’t required. The best time is from day 10 to 12, 14 and 16 of the cycle. This is the fertile window of the cycle when ovulation occurs, if you aren’t sure that you are ovulating then ovulation kits are available .
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If you are looking for help with fertility issues and think Acupuncture might be for you why don’t you book in and try it. www.olivetreebeauty.co.uk
Next time I will look at other factors to help conception so keep reading and following.
Good luck and Good health
Sarah x
