Men and women can both suffer from infertility for a variety of reasons. It’s important for both sexes to undergo treatment in order to increase their fertility if they want to conceive. Various known and unknown factors can cause infertility in both genders. For women, these include diseases such as endometriosis, diminished ovarian reserve, ovulation disorders, and low progesterone level. On the other hand, low sperm count, low sperm motility, sexually transmitted diseases, injury or chronic diseases, sperm blockage, and aging are some of the reasons that make men infertile.
Taking medication and undergoing systematic treatment can cure and eliminate most of the above mentioned problems in order to increase fertility, although these treatments are quite expensive and may have harmful side effects. Additional treatment may then be required in order to cure these side effects. Some of these fertility treatments include in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and both of these have been distinguished to be the best among the other methods to increase fertility. In these treatments, the egg cells outside the womb are fertilized by the sperm and are placed back inside the woman’s uterus. These types of treatment are suggested when other techniques fail to give results. Another well-known technique to increase fertility and induce conception is a hormonally controlled ovulation progression. The ovum is removed from the woman’s ovaries and is fertilized with sperm suspended in a fluid medium. All of these methods are far from being normal processes of conception as they involve the extraction of the eggs from the ovary, fertilizing them in an artificial environment, and putting them back in the uterus. In the natural process of conception, the healthiest sperm is the one that brings about fertilization by reaching the egg first but the embryologist makes this decision in the artificial processes. When he fails to pick the healthiest sperm and egg, the child may experience some difficulties during his or her birth and may have illnesses after birth and all throughout life.
Some alternative techniques that take a holistic approach to increase fertility are fast becoming popular in order to cure the problem of secondary infertility. These techniques are actually more preferable because they have little to no side effects at all. One of these methods is acupuncture. A specific type of this treatment is auricular or ear acupuncture which has been found to be very effective in cases where female infertility was caused by some kind of malfunction in the ovary. The hormonal message that is transferred from the brain to the ovary is the most beneficial result that can be obtained from this technique. Investigative trials conducted have found that women who have received around 30 acupuncture treatments within a time period of 3 months have experienced favorable results. However, women who underwent hormonal therapy along with it suffered from several side effects.
In the alternative treatment methods, diet and lifestyle changes are given a lot of importance. Regular intake of food items that contain caffeine such as coffee, chocolate, cocoa, black tea, and colored soft drinks have detrimental effects and are strongly discouraged to increase fertility. Diets that include fish contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are also believed to cause a substantial reduction in the ability of a woman to become pregnant. According to one study, women who consumed more than one meal that included fish contaminated with PCBs procured from Lake Ontario developed reduced fecundity within a month.
To sum it all up, the best result for the treatment of infertility has been reported with the use of holistic treatments like taking Chinese medicine, herbs, and undergoing acupuncture. The holistic approach digs deeper in order to reach the very depth of the problem in order to deliver physical, spiritual, and emotionally beneficial treatments rather than only concentrating on the state and health of the reproductive organs. The conventional approach to the problem of infertility often fails to successfully identify the root of the problem, and as a result, cannot reverse the real causes of infertility. Moreover, these methods can cause side effects that may require additional treatment and complicated procedures. The holistic approach suggests a natural remedy while improving the way of life of the couple trying to conceive in the hopes of being able to really solve the problem and increase fertility once the root causes have been determined.