IUI stands for Intrauterine Insemination and it is now booming in medical science. It’s becoming a great option for those people who want to conceive but the natural procedure is not working out for them. In this article, we’re going to tell you everything about acupuncture after IUI, the dos and don’ts, and the best methods and timings to go for it in detail. So please stick to it to see the complete breakdown of this topic.
Acupuncture after IUI – Good or Bad?
Acupuncture in itself is a great treatment for infertility as it involves stimulating the hormones and the body organs that are involved in reproduction. Therefore, one should consult an acupuncturist when they’re trying to conceive. But getting your doctor into confidence is also very important as you have to be careful and decide when and how many sessions of acupuncture you should take. Also, acupuncture can be dangerous if taken too many times so deciding the number of acupuncture sessions is also very important.
But acupuncture is not the main topic of this article. We want to talk about IUI and its duo with acupuncture. So, let’s begin with IUI.
What is IUI?
IUI is the procedure of taking the sperm of the male and implanting those sperm into the uterus of the female without intercourse. That means any female can be pregnant without having sex with the opposite gender.
How does IUI work?
During the IUI procedure, the sperms are taken from the donor male, and they’re washed. After scientifically washing the sperms, they’re placed in a sterile fluid. This fluid is medically concentrated after that and into the uterus of the female directly by inserting the catheter right through the cervix.
This procedure makes sure that fertilization happens within the uterus of the female but it still needs some help. And that helps is prescribed by the doctors in the form of infertility drugs that stimulate the whole process. The course of taking the drugs starts a week before this IUI procedure because these medicines help the ovaries in maturing many eggs at the same time before the ovulation process.
Sometimes, doctors recommend a “trigger shot” that helps in inducing ovulation if you need it at any given time. Mostly it is recommended to make your body cooperate with the IUI procedure that you’re going through.
Can Acupuncture Help with IUI in this Matter?
Yes, acupuncture helps in a lot of ways to increase your fertility and cooperates with the IUI procedure overall. If you take sessions of acupuncture before and after the IUI cycle according to the prescribed advice, it relaxes your uterus to enable it to receive good from the treatment. It also increases the blood flow up to a great level that helps your ovaries to easily bear through the medicated IUI cycle. Uterine spasms are also not to be taken non-seriously and that’s why acupuncture becomes even more important because it addresses these issues very well that occur after you go through an IUI cycle.
The infertility drugs prescribed by your doctor are not as effective on normal usage as when they become accompanied by acupuncture. This is because sometimes you may get side effects from those medicines but acupuncturing dismantles those side effects effectively. Researchers have found some great results in the fertility of women who went through acupuncture sessions. It is because they were a lot more relaxed and calm and their body was stressed-free to get the anxiety away from the woman.
How do you know if IUI is the best option for you or not?
IUI is one of the first procedures that a couple should try in order to conceive normally, but taking your doctor into confidence is very important. IUI only involves taking the sperm and putting them into the uterus and letting the fertilization happen naturally inside the uterus. This is a lot closer to the
natural procedure except for the intercourse part. While some people might want to go for IVF which involves taking the sperm and eggs from the male and female respectively and fertilizing them outside the uterus in the lab.
This procedure is claimed to be natural because once fertilization is done, the embryo is placed inside the woman’s uterus. But you can decide that IUI is a lot closer to nature than IVF.
On the other hand, an IVF procedure takes a lot more time and the cycles of treatment after each step in the procedure. Therefore, if you calculate the total cost of IVF and IUI, you will see that IVF is a lot pricier than a normal IUI procedure. It is because obviously IUI doesn’t involve many steps, just taking the sperm and placing it inside the uterus, and that’s it.
IVF or IUI
IUI is more effective and successful if taken properly. As you can see that low sperm count, low motility, or poor morphology can be addressed in a single step. In this procedure, the sperms are directly placed inside the uterus to fertilize the eggs after making them strong enough to do so. Also, we’ve seen a 15 – 20% success rate after each IUI cycle in couples. Therefore, everyone recommends undergoing at least 3 – 4 IUI cycles so that there’s no way left to try before going for IVF. The problem with the sperms in case of male factor infertility can be easily addressed with an Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). You can even avoid the hostile cervical mucus in case it is the culprit of infertility by taking the sperms directly from the male testicles avoiding them to come from the natural way.
There are multiple ways to easily get pregnant by just going through the IUI procedure. The doctors will diagnose a type of appropriate procedure according to your medical reports. For example, if the male is completely infertile and cannot produce sperms that are usable, the IUI procedure also involves taking the sperms from a donor. That’s why; even this problem can be addressed silently considering society calls it taboo if someone is completely infertile.
FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions
What should you not do after IUI?
IUI is a procedure to easily reproduce. Since the procedure is easy, you should also take care and not do such things to avoid any complications. The prohibited actions after the IUI cycle include smoking, drinking, interacting with radiation, or taking stress.
How quickly does acupuncture work for fertility?
It cannot be a fixed amount of time in which you will get pregnant if you take proper acupuncture sessions even regularly. But we’ve seen people getting pregnant between 1 – 3 months of acupuncture sessions by just helping it with small changes in their diet and lifestyle.
What causes IUI to fail?
There can be many reasons for IUI to fail but the major reasons why IUI fails include, the absence of progesterone hormone in the body of the mother. It can also fail because of the problems occurring during ovulation because then no egg cells will be produced for fertilization.
How often is IUI successful on the first try?
It depends on certain medical conditions as well as the age factor of the couple. But according to many IUI centers, almost 10 percent of couples that are under 35 get pregnant after the first cycle of IUI.
Why is IUI’s success so low?
It is because of the timing of the procedure that people go for. Most couples go for IUI procedures at an age when their sperm and egg quality is not that good. Therefore, they mostly need to take several cycles of IUI to conceive successfully and that drops the percentage of the overall success rate of the IUI cycles.
