Infertility Tx's & use of Moxa on Patients

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

I honestly don’t know how to write this without seeming somwhat arrogant (not my intent at all), but you should really take a few CEU courses specializing in these treatments -before- you start treating people. The courses should also cover treating full fertility (i.e. without IVF) to get a good grasp of what you are trying to accomplish. Long story short, treatment is tailored (even to a degree in IVF patients) to the patient using proper diagnostic tools. Accordingly, a deep understanding of what is happening on an anatomical and physiological level is required.

To clarify one major error, however, when you say:

Obviously once a patient becomes pregnant, there is no needling or moxa near the belly and back

This is completely false. You do in fact use those points, possibly not moxa depending on the patient, but there is not only not a problem using those points, they are crucial to the success of the treatment for IVF transfers. Further, for cases of threatened miscarriage, as an example, they are outright crucial. If you have access to scientific journals, you could look at the protocol they used in this study which found “Acupuncture on the day of ET significantly improves the reproductive outcome of IVF/ICSI, compared with no acupuncture. Repeating acupuncture on ET day +2 provided no additional beneficial effect.”

While some in person CEU’s (or online video courses) would be ideal, either way the following texts would be great to read cover to cover to get the basic information that you need.

Then as you are comfortable with that, it will be much easier for us to guide you with more detailed questions as you start seeing patients. I cannot even begin to express how difficult fertility is for patients, so you really need to take this extremely seriously - there are lots of emotions, lives, relationships and money involved in these issues and treating requires a broad understanding of the scientific, medical and psycho-emotional sides of these issues.

Some areas/articles on my site that will be of interest are:

• Acupuncture for Male and Female Infertility (General Intro)
• Acupuncture for Female Infertility
• Contraindicated Points (but, again, these are references only - there are many applicable times for these points).
• A currently work in progress page regarding herbal and acupuncture contraindications for pregnancy.