Does acupuncture really helps In Vitro Fertilization success?

Does acupuncture really helps In Vitro Fertilization success?
Acupuncture is frequently marketed as a successful complementary therapy to improve one’s well-being and health. Acupuncture is a form of Chinese medicine that is very well marketed in the field of female fertility, particularly, that of In Vitro fertilisation. All communication mediums including television, newspapers and social media platforms often display marketing strategies promoting Chinese medicine as well as acupuncture, as effective approaches to the achievement of success with fertility and pregnancy. Marketing promotions with powerful pictures depicting strong emotional messages such as the following can be easily been seen on any communication medium:

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Ping Ming health argues that Chinese medicine has a deep understanding of women’s reproduction system and can helps to prepare the female body for conception, prevent miscarriages and support for post-labour recovery (

Furthermore, they also argue that their own traditional acupuncture techniques centred on the rebalance and the restoration of maximum bodily functions. Female and fertility support accounts for 11% of the top 20 support needs presented to Ping Ming Health. The following silver metric below highlights that the use of acupuncture to promote female fertility and IVF support is one of the highly sought support need by the female consumers group.

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However, there are still out there few scholars and researchers that continue to be sceptical and do not necessarily agree with the argument that acupuncture is effective at all. The debate of acupuncture as a method of treatment in contemporary western medicine is not fully empirically supported (Stener-Victorin, Wikland, Waldenstorm & Lundeberg, 2002). However, despite this, one cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that a high percentage of female individuals continue to seek either alternative or complementary support from acupuncture.

Are all these marketing strategies promoting acupuncture as a successful approach to fertility and pregnancy MISLEADING? Are acupuncture providers invest thousands of dollars in marketing strategies just to attract all those female consumers through their clinic’s door so they can increase their revenues? Should this be the case, certainly, one can concludes that the female consumers group is an easy target who is also a vulnerable individual consumers group as they go through some emotional and sensitive rollercoaster wanting to have a baby.

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To test the true meaning behind the marketing messages that acupuncture does work and does increases the rate of fertility, I decided to do more research and seek some sort of metric evaluation data supporting the emotional messages communicated behind those marketing strategies, marketing pictures and phrases and therefore whether the investment in marketing does brings in any return.

Fortunately, I was able to source some metrics presenting an evidence supporting the above-mentioned argument that acupuncture in fact does work. The following data metric shows numerous studies evaluating use of acupuncture for In Vitro Fertilization.

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AND I was also able to find the following metric evaluation data-

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AND this metric evaluation:
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Nevertheless, the above metrics evaluate whether the introduction of acupuncture as a complementary and or alternative therapy is effective. Clearly the answer is YES. Those evaluation metrics prove the argument that acupuncture does support fertility and conception.

This also proves that the investment in marketing strategies using emotional pictures and phrases promoting acupuncture as an effective treatment does pay off. As a result, the rate of female consumers seeking acupuncture treatments increases; and therefore the profits for acupuncture providers are secured and on the rise.

However, I strongly believe that the above evaluation metrics do not necessarily completely represent the consumer’s satisfaction rate. In this case, I believe clients’ testimonials could also be one effective marketing evaluation. To find out more about this, I did further research and came across the following testimonial:

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In my view, individual personal stories of how acupuncture has assisted and supported is another powerful way to evaluate how marketing of acupuncture been successful. Testimonials are also powerful tools as they also represent emotional pictures and phrases that could support the ‘market’ of acupuncture and generate new incoming clientele to the clinic’s door and therefore generate new revenues for the providers.

By Annette Anat Elbaz 97551477


Alternative Treatments in Reproductive Medicine: Much ado About Nothing. Stener-Victorin, E., Wikland, M., Waldenstorm, U., Lundeberg, T. (2002). Journal of Human Reproductio Vol. 17, pp. 1942-1946.