Aging is a sensitive term for most women. No one wants to grow old but no one can stop the process of aging, the onset of wrinkles and gray hairs. But while we can’t stop time, we can moderate the way time affects us. In modern society, our lifestyles can speed up our aging: stress speeds up aging, eating incorrectly can speed up aging…anything from the way we sleep to what we intake can affect how quickly or slowly our bodies decline.

For women, aging has a strong correlatiuuon to the number of eggs in the ovaries. The eggs are present from the time a baby grows in her mother’s womb, never multiplying or replicating as sperm does. As she loses those eggs throughout her life, she also ages: this process usually ends when she is 50, the age at which she goes through menopause. But just as it affects the aging of the rest of her body, her lifestyle—stress, eating habits—will influence the environment of the ovaries, which can quicken egg apoptosis and affect egg quality. Thus, she might reach menopause too early as a result of an unhealthy lifestyle.

For these reasons, women with these qualities and habits have a much lower chance of pregnancy than women of the same age group without this lifestyles. In my career, I have seen many women who suffer from premature ovarian failure due to highly stressful lives. I have also treated many patients with low ovarian reserve because they were vegetarians without nutritional guidance who did not receive all the nutrition they needed. Katie was one of those examples.

Katie, a 44 year old teacher who worked with kids with speech difficulties at school, felt tense and stressed from her job. She was not eating well because she was always running from place to place. When she first visited me, she hadn’t had a period for three months and had an irregular period (skipped periods) for a year before that. She experienced hot flashes, sweating at night, extreme thirst, stress, tiredness, hair loss, dry vaginal sensations and no sex drive. Her period was very light when it came.

She had already had one child through IVF when she was 40 years old. After her first baby was born, she began to try for another. She underwent three cycles of IVF but each of them failed—she either only had one potential egg or the eggs would not grow at all. The level of her FSH—over 50 miu/ml—indicated that she was going through her menopausal stage.

“Do you think I still have hope?” she asked me during that first visit. I knew she did. I told her that Chinese medicine was different from western medicine. Western medicine stimulates the ovaries to make more eggs. It is an external force that pushes the ovaries to work in a way that they wouldn’t naturally function.

Chinese medicine works by balancing the body, changing the environment of the ovaries so that the eggs are encouraged to grow and work efficiently. It changes from the inside out. I explained that she only needed one good quality egg to have a baby. Once she had an egg, she would have a chance. After she listened, she was still doubtful, but she wanted to try. I evaluated her health condition, diagnosed her with kidney deficiency with qi and yin insufficiency. I recommended that she take Chinese herbs every day and receive acupuncture once a week.

After the first week of treatment, her hot flashes and sweating disappeared. Her sleeping was getting better. The second week, she ovulated and her vaginal discharged increased. After four weeks of treatment, she had a full period. After 11 months of treatment, she became pregnant! On the 11th week of pregnancy, her blood work was tested and she had a level 2 sonogram. The result showed that the baby was normal.

Katie was not an anomaly. In the past, I have successfully treated a 45 year old woman with acupuncture, who had a similar condition to Katie. She came became pregnant with twins with an IVF treatment when she was 46 years old. We also had a patient whom acupuncture helped naturally conceive her first healthy baby after a failed IVF cycle—at the age of 45.

These cases indicate that no matter how old you are, your egg quality still has a chance to improve if we are able to create a good environment for the egg to grow. Chinese medicine and acupuncture can help build up this environment, which improves pelvic circulation so that more oxygen and nutrition to the ovaries for egg and antral follicular growth. The improved environment through acupuncture makes egg quality much better. On one hand, eggs will create more receptors to respond to the FSH, so FSH levels will drop quickly. And then the eggs will be able to grow to maturity. On the other hand, the genes inside the eggs would not be varied easily.

This is an advantage of Chinese medicine. Western medicine assumes tight limits to what the body can do: it accepts that bodies need external medicines, outside forces to force it to act in a way that it should. But in truth, the human body is amazing and its own natural abilities should not be discounted. Our bodies were designed to work, not fail—all we must do is treat them the way they were meant to be treated and, in turn, they will treat us well.