Can physiotherapy help with fertility?

How can osteopathy, physiotherapy, massage and acupuncture help with fertility?

At every stage of conception whether assisted or natural, the function of your, and your partner’s, reproductive organs needs to be in good shape.

Just like your stomach, lungs, and other organs during optimal function, the vaginal, uterine and fallopian tube environments need to be welcoming places for eggs, sperm, embryos and foetuses. Not too alkaline, not too acidic, but just right (kind of like your stomach for digesting food). Not too stiff, not too scarred, but just mobile and mucous enough (like your intestine). Every single tissue in our body needs to be ideally mobile to bring regular fresh fluids (such as blood, lymph, hormones, mucous, acid etc) in and flush used fluids out. This maintains a perfect, flexible, biochemically balanced environment.

All our organs, including our vaginas, uteruses, ovaries, fallopian tubes, testicles and prostates etc are subject to stiffness and immobility in challenging circumstances – trauma and injury (for example, outside the fallopian tubes or uterus associated with endometriosis), hormonal imbalances that cause conditions like polycystic ovaries, scar tissue (eg. chlamydia scarring in your or your partner’s tubes, or surgical scars) and stress (which clogs up everything causing temporary or long-term infertility, heart attacks, and inflammatory conditions to name but three of the myriad consequences).

Manipulation to pelvic organs

Just as you can have manipulation to your low back muscles and joints to help lubricate all the tissues and get them in lovely condition after injury or lack of use, so you can have manipulation to some of your pelvic organs to break down scar tissue, encourage mobility, and the flow of healthy fluids into and out of the organs. We think that it can actually be that simple. Acupuncture can help mitigate the stress of a busy life, or to help stimulate local neuroendocrine feedback loops (a concept based in Western medicine — traditional acupuncture would describe a different mechanism but the sites of needle placement have a surprising number of overlaps in Western and Eastern traditions).

For some couples, it absolutely isn’t that simple. There may be other factors entirely that explain why you’re not getting pregnant. But just as orthopaedic doctors don’t recommend spinal surgery except in the most extreme cases of nerve root compression, relying on manual therapy and exercise as the first, second and third line of treatment, your fertility organs (men as well as women) may be stiff or immobile or undergoing a temporary neuroendocrine imbalance causing suboptimal health and infertility.

Our Practitioners

At our clinic, all our practitioners operate at the highest standards of professionalism – not just by adhering to our regulators’ guidelines about training but also around consent and communication. This means that we will not mislead you. If you have a condition that we think our therapy can’t help with, we will tell you. With your informed consent we agree limits to the number of treatments we will prescribe without results. You are kept informed of all our findings at each appointment. You are in full control of what, how and how much, we treat you.

Ana is our go-to gynaecological and fertility physiotherapist. She uses the most up to date osteopathic techniques to facilitate optimal abdominal and pelvic organ function.

Silene is our pelvic massage specialist, gently facilitating the mobility of pelvic tissues from the superficial abdominal wall muscles and tendons, to deep ligaments around the organs.

Silene and Hannah are our traditional acupuncturists, who use the most ancient and modern acupuncture protocols to facilitate the optimal neuroendocrine environments for female conception.

Please feel free to call and discuss your condition or to ask any questions you may have prior to booking.