In a clinical study of 5,807 women, it was demonstrated that acupuncture improves pregnancy rates and live birth rates. Higher ovulation and pregnancy rates occur for women receiving acupuncture, and further, stimulating the production of gonadotropins, hormones that affect fertility including FSH [follicle stimulating hormone] and LH [luteinizing hormone]. The application of acupuncture points ST36 and SP6 were shown to prevent egg implantation failure, promoting successful conception. In a German study, of 80 women who underwent in-vitro fertilization [IVF] while receiving acupuncture treatment, 34 women became pregnant. Of another 80 women who only received IVF without acupuncture, only 21 women became pregnant. A similar and subsequent American study maintained that 51% of women who had both acupuncture treatments and IVF became pregnant, while only 36%, receiving only IVF without acupuncture became pregnant. Acupuncture also helps with men’s sperm quality and count says a 2005 study in the publication “Fertility and Sterility.” Men who receive acupuncture have fewer structural defects in sperm and increases in normal sperm than men who receive no acupuncture treatment.
Natural Medicine is Best!
We can not receive nourishment without acceptance of our task at hand. Partaking with some sense of openness, we may transform our duty into something of personal, or even greater, value. This ability to transform is a central focus of the earth element in oriental medicine. Sometimes the foreign experience we must digest does not resemble something conferring nourishment, but rather a pile of something indigestible; something difficult and unwanted that we are faced with. 
![Plum and Bamboo under the Moon 月下梅竹 Shí Tāo 石濤 [1642-1707], Early Qing Dynasty. www.ElementalChanges.com](https://elementalchanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/shitao-2.jpg)