Acupuncture for IVF Treatment & Other ARTs

Acupuncture to support your health while going through IVF treatment.

IVF tends to be a mentally and physically stressful experience requiring a range of pharmaceuticals, scans and procedures. Other options such as IUI are less complex, but can be equally mentally challenging.

Acupuncture can be helpful before, during and after these treatments, providing a supportive and personalised therapy focused on fertility. For best results we recommend a preparation period of three months before commencing IVF.

When is it best to start acupuncture for IVF?

In our clinical experience it is best to start acupuncture a few months before commencing ART. We recommend a three month preparation period before starting IVF or IUI.

For women, we adjust our treatments to suit different stages of the cycle paying attention to physical and hormone changes. For men, this is an important time to optimise sperm quality. For both men and women we use acupuncture and dietary therapy and we will recommend life style changes if we believe them to be helpful.

If you have already started on an IVF programme, there are specific stages at which acupuncture can be most useful:

• during the follicular stimulation phase
• after egg collection
• preparing for frozen embryo transfer
• on the day before/of embryo transfer
• during the week before the pregnancy test

Your acupuncture will vary according to which IVF protocol you are following: long or short protocols, frozen embryo cycles or natural cycle. We will also adapt our treatments according to your response to the fertility medication. Many of the drugs used in IVF are hormones, and therefore they affect different women in different ways.

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Useful information and advice on IVF and Fertility

Here are some great articles and videos that you may find helpful.