Seeing the Body as a Whole

What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Getting Pregnant: Boost Your Fertility with the Best of Traditional and Alternative Therapies
by Raymond Chang, M.D., Elena Oumano, Ph.D.

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Before we talk about what traditional Chinese medicine and other alternative and complementary approaches can do for you, it's worth understanding what these healing modalities really are. Although these approaches are diverse, they share certain principles:

First, do no harm. TCM and other alternative health care providers generally begin by prescribing less invasive and risky strategies, such as diet and other lifestyle changes, than conventional physicians prescribe.

Focus on the person, not the disease. TCM and other alternative and complementary practitioners view mind, body, and even spirit as unified and interactive. Women and men also are viewed as part of the environment, so any element in this integrated whole can play a part in creating illness or dysfunction.

Activate and rebalance energy. TCM and other alternative healing modalities assume an energy force moves within all humans and throughout the natural world. Proper activation of that energy creates good health, so a doctor's role is to help activate that energy in appropriate ways.

The body, not the doctor, heals. TCM and other alternative practitioners aim to assist your body to activate its own built-in healing mechanisms.

Allow time for healing to occur. TCM and other alternative practitioners believe that in order for true healing to occur, the body needs time to rebalance and repair. The healing may proceed slowly, but it will be more dramatic, profound, and lasting.

Look for causes. TCM and other alternative practitioners are less interested in suppressing uncomfortable symptoms than they are in tracking down and addressing root causes. Otherwise, true healing cannot happen.

We can see that regardless of their different terminologies and strategies, TCM and other forms of alternative or holistic healing are directed toward a common goal: treating the whole person and stimulating the body's own self-healing and balancing abilities so optimum health and fertility are recovered naturally.

In the following chapter, we will lead you through the principles of traditional Chinese medicine and show you how it can boost your fertility, whether you use it alone or in combination with assisted reproductive technologies. For now, let's explore how the approach and philosophy of TCM and other alternative healing modalities differ from those of conventional Western medicine.

In general, conventional Western medicine (including the specialty of fertility) tends to see the body mechanically - as a collection of organs, any of which may be problematic and need to be treated or repaired. This is a mechanic's point of view - you repair this part or replace that part. It's as if our bodies were automobiles: if a car is low on gas, you add gas. If it needs a new oil filter, you put in an oil filter. If a part of the engine isn't working right, you fix or replace it.

The increasing interest in holistic approaches is also a reaction to Western medicine's overspecialization in which the body systems are viewed as separate from one another. Within this limited and mechanistic model, doctors and patients cannot understand why if everything has been fixed and all the right switches turned on, it still doesn't work. This is why doctors are so puzzled over "unexplained infertility," the category designated to a significant percentage of women who are apparently fertile and healthy but still unable to become pregnant. If this is your situation, you are probably saying something like this: "I had timed our intercourse to the egg's release, my partner's sperm tested well, so why haven't I conceived"? In this day and age of reason and science, we expect our bodies to be as reliable and predictable as the machines we build to make our lives so much easier, and we demand clearcut answers when something doesn't work as it should.

In contrast to conventional Western medicine's mechanical and specialized view, traditional Chinese medicine approaches the entirety of the mind-body-spirit complex functionally. A functional approach, such as how we treat patients who come to our clinic, tailors a comprehensive program to the individual needs of each patient and continually modifies that program in order to address the patient's evolving and changing condition. We are in accord with all fertility experts - conventional or TCM - in first checking for and ruling out all structural impediments to fertility. For example, if surgery is necessary, such as in the case of very large uterine fibroids that prevent conception and implantation of the embryo, it must be done before our TCM treatment can take place. Key to our success is encouraging our patients to adopt the most constructive attitude possible toward the fertility process. Miraculously, even in very difficult cases, where every possible conventional approach has failed, an integrative therapy such as the program we offer often leads to success.

Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Wheel of Fortune

The foundation of our clinic's holistic approach to infertility is traditional Chinese medicine. When many people think of TCM, they think "acupuncture." Yet TCM is a comprehensive health system that also includes its own special diagnostic methods, specific herbs, diet, exercise, massage, and some times meditation and physical disciplines. All these treatments are founded on TCM's underlying philosophical approach to all life issues, including fertility.

One principle of the TCM philosophy is that the same energies responsible for creating and governing the universe are also present within the human body, where they control your health and fertility. Studying the body, then, is a way to explore the nature of the universe.

A second principle of TCM is one we in the West often fail to appreciate, the karmic influence of fortune, the fact that our lives are not meant to be entirely under our control. We are, after all, subject to the vicissitudes of chance. The notion of fortune or the wheel of fortune is common to many world cultures, not only traditional Asian societies. In fact, the word fortune is associated with Fortuna, a Roman goddess of fertility. The principle of fortune as it relates to fertility becomes clear if you ask yourself the following question: Who gave me an ironclad guarantee that if everything is "normal," I am guaranteed pregnancy and a healthy child?

Do not be discouraged by the element of fortune, as your chances can be improved by our holistic approach. You'll discover that taking fortune into account can actually increase your chances of parenthood.

Copyright © 2007 by Raymond Chang, M.D. and Elena Oumano, Ph.D.

About the Author

Raymond Chang, M.D., is an internist, master herbalist, and licensed acupuncturist who attends at New York Presbyterian and Beth Israel hospitals, and specializes in complementary and alternative treatments for infertility. He has been featured in national magazines and interviewed on the Today show.