Does IVF consume a woman's essence and reduce her future fertility

I have found in many of my patients not only will an IVF procedure have significant effects on a patients health so will a succession of clomid cycles.

I recently had a patient who was treated with long cycles come back to regular 28 day cycles with TCM treatment. She started 3 consecutive clomid cycles which now have created even longer cycles. Has anyone else found these results after Clomid or IVF treatments ?

Thanks Lorne for bringing me into this discussion.

He He I am assuming that when you said, "And therefore she is not consuming any more essence to grow all the follicles because she is receiving it artificially from her infections.", you actually meant injections not infections LOL.

Yes this is an interesting topic and is quite open to debate and interpretation. My thinking has been that IVF cycles do deplete some type of essence because, as lorne mentioned above, during the IVF cycle many more eggs are encouraged to become dominant instead of just one. Then all of these eggs will be harvested from the body instead of being reabsorbed back, thus preventing re-nourishment.

From my understanding, FSH is only a trigger hormone that turns a cell on. It is what gives the green light to the cells innards to grow. It is the mitrochondria within the cell that produces ATP to energize the cell to grow. ATP production is dependent on proper nutrition from the woman's body. Putting more energy into an event that normally doesn't happen in such a big way is bound to deplete the body in someway.

What was interesting to me was that herbs that were found to generate the most ATP were mostly from the kidney Yang supplementing category. One of the best was Tu Si Zi, which we all know nourishes yin as well as supplementing yang, and by doing both Tu Si ZI may very well nourish essence.

Essence has an element of both yin and yang within it. I am thinking that the process of growth, and especially quick growth, demands a lot of energy- particularly from the yang aspect of essence.

So lets work backwards. Many kidney yang herbs promote ATP production, meaning that ATP production is in dependence on kidney yang. If kidney yang is strained to work harder to produce dominant eggs, then it has the potential to become weakened. Kidney yang is an aspect of essence, so if kidney yang is weakened then so will the essence.

Obviously this is just theory, but it is interesting to think about. I would imagine that there is more than just ATP production involved with cell growth and egg maturation. Perhaps others who have a better grasp of cell biology could add some of their thinking??

Trevor

www.skin.health-info.org

www.acubalance.ca

I have noticed this quite often as well Ryan.

A couple things that I know about this are:

1) chlomid can contribute to cyst formation on the ovary, which will inevitably lead to poor natural ovulation, with delayed cycles. This would have to be confirmed with an ultra sound and or blood test of her estrogen levels. I have seen this quite a few times now and actually think it is a major drawback to chlomiphene use.

2) From what I understand chlomid can have an effect on the body for up to three months after taking it, so for some women their cycles will be wonky during this time.

Trevor

www.skin.health-info.org

www.acubalance.ca

This is a great topic. I agree with what has been said about the various drugs and the physiological dynamics of IVF. I would agree that jing is depleted, I would put some , if not a lot of that blame on the process. The worry, re-arranged schedules, financial stress, martial stress, fear, small medical traumas/tests etc. etc,. All this on a patient population that is well beyond prime childbearing years, where jing is not necessarily in abundance in the first place.

I agree that IVF may have a Jing damaging affect, in some women more than others depending on their condition. And we all know that the strength of the parents' Jing is passed on to their children. So if IVF weaks Jing in women and in some cases allows men with weaker Jing to reproduce when they otherwise wouldn't be able to, how does this affect the baby? I have heard that IVF babies have more difficulty with concieving. Is this true? And does a weaker Jing make the babies more prone to Autism or other disorders?

I am still curious if we can use TCM theory along with hat we know from western science if IVF weakens Jing. Remember, current data seems to suggest that multiple IVF's do not cause premature menopause. Does this data conflict with what we are saying? I like what Trevor wrote. It uses science and TCM to explain how it may damage the jing. Does anyone have data that the children are less healthy? And does the data compare these children to the same parent population but who did not use IVF? If not, I personally cannot put too much weight on this data. Maybe it is the age of the parents sand not the IVF leading to Jing issues in the children?

Has anyone seen the paper on how multiple retrievals (fresh IVF) can impair infertility? I think it suggested that the repetitive retrievals lead to some scarring in the ovaries. We can make this parallel in TCM as well. The retrieval process actually results in blood stasis as a result of the traumatic injury that results from the extraction of the eggs fro the ovaries during an IVF.

So IVF can diminish a women's fertility? Jing consumption from causing multiple follicles to mature and also by causing blood stasis from the retrieval process

Lorne

www.acubalance.ca

www.prodseminars.com

Hello All

I saw some preliminary data on IVF/ICSI and birth defects compared with general population and infertile population. For twins, no difference. For IVF with ICSI and singles the biggest one was 8.8% genital defects in the ICSI. That was about double normal infertile population.

Also the biggest correlation to birth defects was with being infertile in general. That the largest significant indicator or birth defects, the diagnosis of infertility itself.

Kaleb

Hey Kelab,

That is interesting data you have. I would love to see the original research. Do you have the links for these?

IVF is certainly a miraculous procedure. It can help provide a family with their much desired child...... but at what cost?

Trevor

www.skin.health-info.org

www.acubalance.ca

Hello Everybody,

I'm new here, just found this site today. I'm from Holland and its great to talk about acupuncture with collegues from all over the world. Very interesting subject, with a lot of angles I think.

I also treat people who have an IVF/ICSI treatment but you are talking about damaging Jing with the treatment.

And do you think that the drug treatment from the Hospital is damaging the Jing or the additional ap treatment? Or both ?

I was wondering which ap points you use in your treatment? And which points especially effect which part of the proces?

Frank

www.frankroosen.com

Hi Trevor

I got the info from a talk by Dr. Anthony Cheung (he's the UBC IVF medical director) at a talk he did called Pregancy Outcomes after Sub-fertility: Separating the effects of disease and treatment @ the 2006 Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society annual general meeting. He might have published the material since then or he might have the data himself if you contact him. I've got my own notes from the talk, brief that they are. If you send me your email I'll scan them and send them to you. drkaleb@fertilitytoronto.ca.

Kaleb

I would like to add a different perspective. Say that IVF cycles do affect a person's Jing. Who are the only practitioners that can help/mitigate that. Us! These patient will go through IVF whether or not we see them. So do we not then have a responsibility to help our patients going through IVF because we can mitigate the effects.

Even better than mitigate we can improve a person's Jing.

I've heard this from a few reputable sources. The one whose name I can remember is Bob Damone. He says that there is a major TCM text that every DTCM in China learns from but that is not translated into English. In that text, can't remember the name, that the saying Liver and Kidney's share the same source is explained as a two way street. That not only does that mean that if you have a Liver Yin deficiency you will have a Kidney Yin deficiency, but that if you can nourish Kidney Jing by nourishing Liver Blood. He says it much more elegantly that I just did in his course on Male Reproductive Medicine.

So lets get out there and protect and nourish our IVF patients Jing!!

Kaleb

Hi Kaleb,

I think the men's course you are referring to by Bob Damone is called Improving Men's Sexual Health and Reproductive Function. (http://www.prodseminars.net/catalog/mens-health)

I agree with some of your points Kaleb. Part of my reason for starting this thread was to see if we can find evidence to support the actual IVF process can deplete ones fertility through damaging the Jing then it would be reasonable to caution couples to post pone any IVF until they spend the required time to balance their bodies and optimize their fertility. Many may conceive during these preconception treatments and if and when they undertake the IVF, hopefully they are in peak condition to only need one cycle of IVF. Now this is somewhat theoretical but worth looking into more. Obviously the couple’s willingness to be proactive during these 6-12 months of preconception care and the skills of the practitioner will greatly impact their chances of success.

Lorne

www.acubalance.ca

www.prodseminars.com

I started this post on Oct 2008 to make a space for discussion on the topic of IVF and understanding what possible impact it could have on a women's fertility and health. I am now following up my post in April 2010 and I would like to let Trevor know he shares company with Yaron Seidman on his view of how IVF drugs can impact fertility. Yaron writes about similar thoughts and theories around this topic in his book Curing Infertility: The Incredible Hunyuan Break Through.

I hope he will share some excerpts from his book here in our post.

Details on his book: http://www.curinginfertility.org/prod.html

Lorne
www.acubalance.ca
www.prodseminars.com