Female Infertility
A Needle Here...A Baby Here!

Monday, February 23, 2004, Eagle Tribune News
By Julie Kirkwood, Staff Writer

Jen Huyck of Salem, NH, remembers regularly breaking down in tears three years ago because she couldn't get pregnant.

She cried when the infertility clinic called to tell her another ovulation cycle resulted in no viable eggs. She cried when her friends got pregnant and she couldn't. She cried when she had to choose last-minute between traveling to a friend's wedding or seeing a doctor at the right time in her cycle.

She got so upset that in mid-2001 she gave up on the blood tests, the daily vaginal ultrasounds and the hormone roller-coaster ride. The stress of the treatments and her failure to get pregnant were triggering panic attacks, and she felt she wouldn't be any good for a child even if she could get pregnant.

Then, it happened. Seemingly by chance, she got pregnant after about four months of weekly acupuncture. Less than three years later, Huyck's anxiety is under control and she is the proud mother of a 1-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old baby girl.

She admits she was skeptical about the holistic treatment. "I really, really did not believe any of it could possibly work," she said.

Traditional doctors have been warming to the idea of fertility acupuncture for several years since small studies have hinted at measurable benefits, especially when acupuncture is coupled with Western-medicine techniques such as in vitro fertilization. While acupuncturists schooled in the 5,000-year-old Chinese medical practice describe what they do in terms of energy flow (or "Qi") and meridians, Western doctors have found the pin pricks to the skin actually increase endorphins in the blood stream, which can be measured in blood tests. Endorphins influence a hormone involved in ovulation, gonadotropin, and though it hasn't been proven, doctors suspect this might be why acupuncture helps a woman get pregnant. The stress-relieving effects of endorphins may also play a role.

So as the word spreads -- it was even a plot line on HBO's "Sex and the City" -- many women are giving it a try and report success.

"When you're going through this, you might as well try everything that might be helpful," said 40-year-old Haverhill resident Carolyn Hart.

Hart, who is chief financial officer of United Way of the Merrimack Valley, tried acupuncture for the first time after two failed in vitro fertilization attempts. For 21/2 months before her third attempt, she spent an hour or two each week lying on a massage table listening to classical music with needles in her wrists, ankles, abdomen or ears. She is now pregnant with a baby boy due March 15.

A small German study in 2002 found that acupuncture 25 minutes before and 25 minutes after an embryo transfer increases pregnancy rates to 42.5 percent, compared to about 26 percent without acupuncture.

"I think there's something to it," said Dr. R. Ian Hardy, associate medical director of the Fertility Center of New England, based in Reading. "It needs to be held to the same standards (as Western medicine), but it's worthy of study. It's not to be dismissed. ... It's not quackery at all."

Acupuncture does have its limits, Hardy cautioned. One of his patients saw an acupuncturist for a month before she found out the reason she wasn't getting pregnant was her husband had no sperm.

"You can do acupuncture until the cows come home in that case," he said, "and you're not going to get pregnant."

Likewise acupuncture is not going to help a woman get pregnant if her problem is something that needs surgical correction, such as a blockage in her Fallopian tubes.

That's why it's so important to work with a traditional doctor as well as an acupuncturist, said David Sollars, an acupuncturist with FirstHealth in Andover.

"Most of the people that we see are going to a physician," Sollars said. "We're practicing integrative medicine along with alternative medicine. ... Together we do a better job for the patient."

That may be why fertility acupuncture is bringing so many new clients into acupuncture offices.

Huyck, a health-care consultant, didn't try acupuncture until her boss talked her into it. She made her first appointment only to treat the anxiety brought on by her unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant. After the first few treatments, she noticed a difference.

"My mother thought I was drunk when I came out of there," Huyck said. "She had never seen me so relaxed."

When her panic attacks stopped, Sollars, who was her acupuncturist, started working on other areas of her health. He got her allergies under control to the point where she stopped taking medications, he helped her digestive problems and he got her menstrual cycle settled into a regular schedule. Huyck felt so good after four months of treatments she started thinking about trying to get pregnant again.

Before she could make the doctor's appointment she found out she was carrying a baby. Just six weeks after her daughter Lauren was born, she got pregnant again unexpectedly. She is now home on maternity leave taking care of Rebecca, who was born Dec. 11.

"My husband keeps joking, 'Now you have to go back to David and reverse what he did,'" Huyck said.

Hardy worries that success stories like Huyck's may give people false hope. "Somebody said, 'I did it and it worked,' and they assume it'll work for everybody," Hardy said. "It won't."

Though Hardy sees promise in acupuncture, the research is still in its infancy, he said. Without studying a large number of people, it's impossible to know if Huyck's pregnancy had anything to do with the acupuncture, he said. Maybe her body had been releasing poor-quality eggs; then by chance a good egg was released. It takes the average fertile couple about five months to get pregnant because women's eggs vary so much in quality. Huyck's acupuncture could have been as insignificant as a peanut butter sandwich she may have eaten the day she got pregnant -- it coincided with her pregnancy but did not cause it.

"That's one patient," Hardy said. "That's not science."

Dr. Thomas L. Toth, director of the Vincent Memorial in Vitro Fertilization program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the studies done so far have not been large enough or clear enough for him to be convinced that acupuncture is actually acting on a woman's hormones to stimulate her ovaries.

He does, however, advocate acupuncture in conjunction with modern assisted reproduction techniques because of the relaxation effects.

"I'm a big supporter of this treatment," Toth said. "Infertility can take such an emotional toll. I think any tool that can lighten the load is marvelous."

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