How Acupuncture Improves Fertility & Hormone Health | Dr. Andrew Huberman
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00:00:02.360 | There are now a lot of data supporting the idea
00:00:04.600 | that acupuncture of all things can be very beneficial
00:00:08.060 | for improving both female and male fertility
00:00:10.880 | and should a woman get pregnant
00:00:13.160 | for improving the quality of outcomes.
00:00:15.500 | That is the likelihood that there will be
00:00:18.000 | a successful pregnancy that is carried to term,
00:00:21.800 | not premature and so on and so forth.
00:00:24.640 | Now, for some of you out there, you might think,
00:00:26.200 | oh, of course, acupuncture.
00:00:27.400 | Acupuncture has been known to work for thousands of years.
00:00:29.960 | And therefore, it's not surprising
00:00:32.400 | that it would assist with fertility and pregnancy.
00:00:35.560 | For many of you out there, however,
00:00:37.400 | probably thinking acupuncture,
00:00:38.680 | that seems kind of like fringe science.
00:00:40.680 | But what I can assure you
00:00:42.240 | is that there are now quite a few clinical trials
00:00:45.080 | funded by government agencies
00:00:46.520 | like the National Institutes of Health
00:00:49.040 | showing that acupuncture is a very effective treatment
00:00:51.600 | for a number of different things,
00:00:52.960 | including fertility and pregnancy,
00:00:55.000 | but for hormone status, for stress relief,
00:00:58.280 | but even for chronic illnesses of different kinds,
00:01:01.200 | including autoimmune illnesses.
00:01:02.820 | So this is no longer considered fringe science.
00:01:05.040 | In fact, one of the best laboratories in the world
00:01:07.600 | working on this is a laboratory
00:01:09.320 | out of Harvard Medical School
00:01:10.880 | run by a guy named Chufu Ma.
00:01:13.020 | Chufu's lab has really been exploring in a mechanistic way
00:01:16.840 | how the different stimulation sites
00:01:19.040 | that are used in acupuncture,
00:01:20.360 | so where the needles are inserted,
00:01:22.100 | tap into neural pathways
00:01:23.800 | that link the different organs of the body.
00:01:26.040 | So for instance, they've found that stimulation
00:01:29.040 | of a particular site on the lower limb
00:01:32.000 | can reduce inflammation dramatically throughout the body
00:01:35.360 | by way of neural pathways that originate in the lower limb
00:01:38.920 | and extend to areas such as the kidney and the pancreas.
00:01:42.080 | So all these "ancient maps" of the human body
00:01:45.800 | as they relate to acupuncture
00:01:47.080 | are now being parsed at the level of mechanism,
00:01:49.500 | which I think is wonderful
00:01:50.560 | because it not only is showing us
00:01:52.840 | that so much of what has been purported and reported
00:01:56.440 | in the landscape of acupuncture
00:01:58.400 | actually has an underlying mechanistic basis.
00:02:01.000 | And with additional mechanistic understanding,
00:02:03.200 | of course, always arrive new and better practices.
00:02:05.800 | That's the idea, to evolve these fields of acupuncture,
00:02:08.980 | to evolve the fields of mechanistic understanding
00:02:11.080 | of our biology and health.
00:02:12.680 | And so the issue of whether or not acupuncture
00:02:16.040 | can assist in getting pregnant
00:02:17.920 | and in carrying a child to term
00:02:20.620 | and for that child to be healthy
00:02:22.120 | are really starting to emerge in a major way.
00:02:25.520 | And rather than go into all those data in detail,
00:02:27.860 | what I can tell you is that there are clinical trials
00:02:30.520 | and data supporting the fact that female fertility itself
00:02:33.520 | can be supported by acupuncture through several mechanisms.
00:02:37.600 | One of which is the balancing,
00:02:40.260 | and I realize that's a somewhat tricky term
00:02:41.760 | and I'll define it better in a moment,
00:02:43.120 | the balancing of hormones
00:02:44.200 | across the ovulatory/menstrual cycle,
00:02:47.360 | including regulating levels of FSH
00:02:50.280 | so that they're not too high nor too low
00:02:52.600 | and restricting the FSH to the follicular phase
00:02:55.720 | of the menstrual cycle,
00:02:58.000 | as well as using acupuncture to improve things
00:03:01.840 | like blood flow and the health of the ovary itself
00:03:04.720 | and other aspects of the female reproductive axis.
00:03:08.000 | So acupuncture can operate at the chemical level,
00:03:11.240 | impacting hormones.
00:03:12.300 | It can act at the mechanical level,
00:03:14.680 | impacting the different tissues
00:03:16.500 | through which the egg has to pass and so on and so forth.
00:03:19.280 | Likewise, on the male side,
00:03:21.160 | acupuncture has been shown to improve semen volume,
00:03:25.140 | quality of sperm, sperm motility, et cetera,
00:03:28.760 | and in large part through changes in the neural pathways
00:03:32.600 | that innervate the very tissues and vascular input
00:03:37.000 | to the scrotum and testicles,
00:03:38.780 | because as we learned earlier,
00:03:41.000 | temperature regulation of the scrotum and testicles
00:03:43.000 | is so vital for getting healthy sperm
00:03:45.600 | and increasing sperm quality.
00:03:47.640 | In addition, there are good data to support the idea
00:03:50.480 | that acupuncture can increase levels of testosterone,
00:03:53.920 | free testosterone and the sorts of hormones
00:03:55.760 | that are going to support healthy hormone production
00:03:58.680 | and sperm production in males.
00:04:01.480 | And this is distinct from applying testosterone
00:04:05.440 | from an exogenous source, right?
00:04:06.900 | So when we're talking about acupuncture
00:04:08.320 | and increasing levels of testosterone,
00:04:09.880 | we're talking about increasing levels
00:04:11.320 | of endogenous testosterone.
00:04:13.360 | So those Leydig cells can support the Sertoli cells
00:04:15.840 | and the Sertoli cells can make that androgen binding protein
00:04:18.440 | and you get an enhanced spermatogenesis.
00:04:20.880 | You can find evidence for all of these different features,
00:04:23.200 | both changes to the chemical milieu, that is the hormones,
00:04:25.600 | and changes to the mechanical milieu,
00:04:27.520 | including for instance,
00:04:28.800 | improvement of the pathways leading
00:04:31.120 | from the seminiferous tubules to the epididymis
00:04:33.280 | to the vas deferens,
00:04:34.320 | basically clearing out the plumbing
00:04:35.860 | so that more quality ejaculate can be delivered,
00:04:38.520 | which of course is going to increase
00:04:39.920 | the probability of fertilization.
00:04:42.000 | So when you hear that acupuncture
00:04:43.560 | can improve the likelihood of pregnancy,
00:04:46.180 | that's an accurate statement
00:04:47.400 | for which there are now increasing amounts
00:04:49.460 | of mechanistic data.
00:04:50.760 | If you want to learn more about how acupuncture
00:04:53.080 | can be used to contribute
00:04:54.760 | to improve fertilization in pregnancy,
00:04:57.240 | there are a number of different excellent reviews on this,
00:04:59.880 | both as it relates to females and as it relates to males.
00:05:03.640 | One of the best papers that I happen to like
00:05:06.200 | is one that we'll provide a link to in the references
00:05:08.360 | entitled Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine
00:05:10.120 | for Female Fertility, an Overview of Systematic Review.
00:05:12.960 | So a review of reviews.
00:05:15.600 | This was published recently in 2021.
00:05:18.360 | We'll provide a link to that.
00:05:19.720 | And there's also going to be a link to a review
00:05:23.020 | that relates to acupuncture for male fertility
00:05:25.680 | and hormone augmentation.
00:05:27.360 | I should just mention briefly
00:05:28.980 | that if you're going to look at scientific papers,
00:05:31.760 | one thing that you'll want to consider
00:05:33.520 | is also looking at the references that they reference.
00:05:35.920 | Now, of course, papers tend to reference a ton of references
00:05:38.440 | in particular in reviews.
00:05:39.720 | So what you'll want to do is look for the references
00:05:42.080 | that are showing up most often in the introduction.
00:05:45.040 | Those references often are going to be
00:05:47.000 | the most prominent recent reviews
00:05:49.040 | or the most important findings in recent years.
00:05:51.640 | That's not always the case, but that's often the case.
00:05:53.960 | So if you read the first couple of paragraphs
00:05:55.700 | of these papers, and these are openly available
00:05:57.580 | as full text, by the way, online, if you go to these links,
00:06:00.840 | you'll be able to access the best papers,
00:06:03.440 | the most relevant papers in the context
00:06:05.440 | of acupuncture supporting female
00:06:07.760 | and acupuncture supporting male fertility and hormone status.
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