Stress affects fertility. Does Acupuncture help stress & fertility?
Fertility can seem like such a mystery sometimes! While every woman is different, stress is often a contributing factor to lowered fertility. How does stress affect fertility exactly? Does Pregnancy Acupuncture help with fertility and stress?
Ongoing chronic stress does affect your fertility
Our stress responses are an inbuilt system that is designed to help us, and in the short term, they really do!
When there's perceived or actual stress (everything from sensing danger to being super hungry!) the body elevates your Cortisol levels (stress hormones) to get things done ASAP.
This gives us a quick spike of energy to be able to get food to sustain us, to run away from a dangerous situation or basically have the energy to make changes to our body that enables us to survive!
All good things in the short term right?
HERE'S THE TRADE OFF:
The body has to prioritise its functions in times of stress. With limited time, energy and resources, your body will prioritise keeping you alive over maturing sperm & eggs and ovulating any day!
And this is the problem long term...
3 Ways Stress Impacts Fertility
When you're stressed, your body increases Cortisol production. This encourages more blood flow to your brain, some organs and to your big muscles to allow you to run away from something dangerous!
It also means it diverts blood flow away from the testes, ovaries & uterus...
Fertility hormones like Oestrogen & Progesterone (essential for baby making!) are made from the same building blocks as Cortisol. If the body decides it needs more stress hormones to cope, then it reduces the amount of fertility hormones it makes. Same deal for men with the body making more Cortisol than Testosterone (needed to mature the sperm) in times of high stress.
Fine short term, not so good long term.
When you have decreased pelvic blood flow + hormonal disruption, it can delay ovulation making timing sex for conception tricky! We don't always ovulate at the same time each month EVEN IF your cycle is the same length.
Priotising where blood goes & what hormones to make was a good idea throughout human history when presented with the options of running away from a predator (like a lion!) vs making babies. However, in modern life this stress system has gotten jammed on!
What does the research say?
This 2016 study of 400 women found:
“During the follicular phase, there was a 46% reduction in fecundability (increased time to conception) for a 1-unit increase in self-reported stress during the estimated ovulatory window” (Meaning the more stressed the women were leading up to ovulation, the longer it took to fall pregnant).
Lead researcher Kira Taylor states “psychological health and well-being is just as important as other more commonly accepted risk factors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, or obesity when trying to conceive”This 2015 study of 1200 men found:
”Men with the highest stress levels had 38% lower sperm concentration, 34% lower total sperm count, and 15% lower semen volume than men with intermediate stress levels” Yikes!This 2009 study of women undergoing IVF found:
”Stress may reduce the chances of a successful outcome following IVF, possibly through psychobiological mechanisms affecting medical end-points such as oocyte retrieval outcome.”
Gentle Pregnancy Acupuncture with Dr Danielle Maguire (TCM)
How can Acupuncture & Herbal Medicine help fertility?
Understandably, we get asked this question a lot!!
Simply explained, here's how Chinese Medicine helps men & women.
Acupuncture lowers cortisol. This switches you out of "Go Go Go" sympathetic mode and into "Rest, Relax & Regulate" (parasympathetic) mode so your body can regulate hormones properly. Lowering your Cortisol levels is why you feel sooo relaxed after an Acupuncture session!
Acupuncture helps improve pelvic blood flow so your ovaries & uterus (and testes for the gents) can do their best work! A combo of tummy & leg Acupuncture points are fab for doing this.
Herbs help your gut absorb the nutrients in your food & vitamins so your body has enough of the good stuff to survive AND do extra stuff like grow sperm or eggs & ovulate!
Here's more awesome research if you're keen.