April 22nd to 28th is National Infertility Awareness Week. The week was instituted by a group called Resolve. This group is part of the National Infertility Association and they strive to help those struggling with infertility by providing access to care, support, community, and education. As part of our contribution to National Infertility Awareness Week, we here at Vital Life Chiropractic want to share our knowledge about the experience some women have had overcoming infertility through chiropractic care.

Who Struggles with Infertility?

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just older women who struggle with infertility. Women and men of all ages can face infertility, which is simply the inability to get or stay pregnant. About 10% of women in the US between ages 15 and 44 face infertility, a diagnosis that is given only after one full calendar year of actively trying to conceive with no viable pregnancies resulting.

Men alone contribute to about one third of infertility issues, while women alone contribute to about one third, and the remaining one third of infertility cases can be attributed to both men and women with infertility.

What Are the Common Treatments for Infertility?

Most medications that are prescribed for infertility are designed to help women ovulate more regularly. These fertility treatments can often lead to increased likelihood of getting pregnant with multiples, such as twins or triplets. Being pregnant with multiples often leads to more complications during pregnancy, especially for those who previously faced infertility.

Other infertility treatments include intrauterine insemination, where a woman is injected with specially prepared sperm, and assisted reproductive technology, such as in vitro, where a woman’s eggs are fertilized outside her body and then the embryos are placed back into her uterus. Unfortunately, these treatments are incredibly expensive and not guaranteed to work. In vitro fertilization is only successful about 40% of the time and after one cycle of intrauterine insemination, women only have about a 10 to 20% chance of getting pregnant.

How Can Chiropractic Help with Infertility?

The problem with the most common infertility treatments is that they don’t get to the root cause of the problem. Whether the issue lies in the man or the woman, medications or insemination procedures only help a woman get pregnant one time, if that. Dr. Ronnie Bolar, a Lithia Springs chiropractor, always strives to get the root cause of the issue his practice members are having, and infertility is no different.

The nerves to the reproductive organs run through the lumbar spine. If a person has a misalignment in their lower back, it means that the nerves in those areas are being interfered with, so the signals the brain is sending to the connected organs are not being received properly. This interference causes dysfunction. In this case, a subluxation (or misalignment) in the lower back can result in infertility. After regular chiropractic adjustments, the body can heal from the misalignment and bring about proper function in the reproductive organs, leading to a couple getting pregnant and staying pregnant completely naturally and on their own.

If you’re struggling with infertility, know that you are not alone and that you don’t have to struggle anymore. Chiropractic care can help. Dr. Ronnie Bolar at Vital Life Chiropractic would love to meet with you and discuss how he and his team can help you achieve a better life and healthier body function.

 

Sources

Alcantara, J., Stern, G., Oman, R. “Female Infertility, Subluxation & Chiropractic Care.” Journal of Pediatric, Maternal, and Family Health, 2009 June; 1-10. https://livingvitallife.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Female-Infertility-Subluxation-Chiropractic-Care.pdf.

Anderson-Peacock, E. “Reduction of Vertebral Subluxation Using Torque Release Technique with Changes in Fertility: Two Case Reports.” Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 2003 July; 1-6. https://livingvitallife.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/JVSR-Infertility-Anderson-Peacock-1.pdf.

“Infertility: Overview.” PubMed Health, 2015 March.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0076677/.