Acupuncture can be helpful to support both female and male fertility by increasing blood flow to the reproductive organs, balancing hormones, reducing inflammation, and improving sleep and stress. Patients with unexplained infertility, high stress, or those seeking to improve their outcomes with ART (such as IVF) can also benefit from adding acupuncture to their care plan. The use of acupuncture with respect to managing fertility that is naturally or during assisted reproductive techniques or to treat gynaecological problems is gaining popularity but remains controversial.

Acupuncture has become very popular within the field of assisted reproduction, and particularly as an intervention within IVF (In-Vitro Fertilisation). In an editorial from 2015 in Acupuncture in Medicine, David Carr lists 12 meta-analyses on the subject in just 6 years, including a total of 34 RCTs.[1] There was no clear conclusion from the reviews – most outcomes showed no benefit for acupuncture, but some did. In general we see quite large benefits over control in open studies, and no effects in blinded sham control studies.