Effects of Acupuncture on Rates of Pregnancy, Essay Example

There are many alternative strategies to traditional healthcare that I have encountered in my clinical practice. The most relevant are pain relieving techniques, as many women who are currently pregnant or who have already delivered experience back pain as a consequence of the additional weight load. During pregnancy, it is important for expecting mothers to avoid taking medications that could cause potential damage to the unborn child and many individuals elect Chinese medicine procedures to eliminate the pain. The most popular procedure is acupuncture, because it is able to reduce pain and tension immediately, and could be used over time in order to promote lasting effects.

In addition to using acupuncture to relieve pain, studies have shown that women that use acupuncture as a prenatal method improves rates of pregnancy and live birth among women who undergo in vitro fertilization (Manheimer et al., 2008). While the reasoning for this is relatively unknown, it is possible that acupuncture helps reduce the stress of these women which helps the pregnancy come to term. This is valuable knowledge for my own clinical practice because it demonstrates that there are many advantages associated with acupuncture, and it would be helpful to continue to investigate this relationship to determine which other portions of the patient population this type of therapy could benefit.

In addition to acupuncture, chiropractic care and massage therapy are reasonable alternatives to pain medications. In fact, massage therapy has been shown to have similar effects on in vitro fertilization as acupuncture (Okhowat et al., 2015). The particular therapy that would be advantageous depends on the individual’s medical situation however, and in the case of pregnant women, this decision should be made after consulting the help of a medical professional.

References

Manheimer E, Zhang G, Udoff L, Haramati A, Langenberg P, Berman BM, Bouter LM. (2008). Effects of acupuncture on rates of pregnancy and live birth among women undergoing in vitro fertilisation: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ., 8;336(7643):545-9.

Okhowat J, Murtinger M, Schuff M, Wogatzky J, Spitzer D, Vanderzwalmen P, Wirleitner B, Zech NH. (2015). Altern Ther Health Med., 21(2):16-22.