According to a study by Japanese scientists, sniffing lavender or rosemary oil for just five minutes a day can reduce levels of a harmful stress hormone called cortisol.

It is known to cause oxidative stress, a destructive process that damages healthy cells. In the latest study, researchers at Meikal University, Japan, recruited 22 healthy volunteers and took saliva samples to test for a range of substances including cortisol.

Each one had to spend five minutes inhaling lavender or rosemary oil before the tests were repeated. The results in the Journal of Psychiatry Research showed a sharp drop in cortisol levels after sniffing the oil.

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medicine technique that uses hair-thin needles to treat pain, allergies, and nausea, is showing promise as a treatment for female infertility. Researchers from New York’s Weill Cornell Medical Centre recently reviewed existing sutdies and found that acupuncture helps…

1. Reduce stress hormones that interfere with ovulation
2. Normalize hormones that regulate ovulation so an egg is released
3. Increase blood flow to the uterus, improving the chances of a fertilized egg implanting
4. Improve ovulation cycles in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which makes getting pregnant difficult. Many women with PCOS seem to find it helpful in kick starting absent periods or regulating cycles.
5. Improve pregnancy rates in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)

Acupuncture is based on the theory that vital energy (or “qi,” pronounced “chi”) flows through the body along certain pathways. Acupuncturists try to balance this energy and restore health by stimulating specific points along the pathways with thin needles.

Traditional acupuncturists treat the whole person rather than a disease and therefore attempt to get to the root cause of the problem rather than treating the symptoms and, like other holistic practitioners, will consider all lifestyle and environmental factors before commencing treatment for infertility. Although it has been a staple of Chinese medicine for some 5,000 years, acupuncture has gained greater acceptance in the medical community only in the past few decades.

Acupuncture is perhaps one of the best researched natural therapies, other than nutrition. There is published evidence that acupuncture works well for such problems as back pain, toothaches and migraines and a growing body of research to suggest that it can help with infertility. In 2002, a team of German researchers discovered that acupuncture significantly increased the odds of pregnancy among a group of 160 women who were undergoing IVF treatment. Forty-two percent of the women who received acupuncture got pregnant, compared to 26 percent of those who didn’t receive the treatment. The researchers speculated that acupuncture helped increase blood flow to the uterus and relax the muscle tissue, giving the embryos a better chance of implanting.

Other research suggests that acupuncture is effective in reducing stress. Since stress has been shown to interfere with getting pregnant, because it can interfere with hormonal balance, it makes sense that reducing your stress through acupuncture could theoretically improve your odds of conceiving. Some women find acupuncture helpful to cope with the stress they feel about trying to conceive.

Acupuncture may also help male infertility. New research shows that acupuncture can significantly improve the quality and health of sperm. In a study published in Fertility and Sterility in 2005, researchers analysed sperm samples from men with infertility of unknown cause before and after acupuncture treatments. They found that acupuncture was associated with fewer structural defects in sperm and an increase in the number of normal sperm.

Although the researchers from Weill Cornell Medical Centre suggested that acupuncture shows great promise for treating fertility problems, many other experts believe that we need larger and better studies, ideally random and double blind, using fake needles for some patients and real ones for others, in order to truly know whether acupuncture is effective. In some of the studies mentioned above, the patients and health care providers knew that acupuncture was performed, which meant that the studies weren’t actually “blind” and the success of the treatment might have been due to what’s known as the placebo effect, the belief that something will help. So perhaps it was the patients’ belief in acupuncture — rather than the acupuncture itself — that accounted for the treatment’s success. It’s difficult to tell.

Perhaps, in the end it doesn’t matter that much whether the success of acupuncture is a placebo effect or not. The bottom line is that acupuncture is safe as long as you contact a qualified practitioner and if it improves fertility — even if it’s only because you think it does — or helps reduce the stress and anxiety associated with infertility and fertility treatment it can be worthwhile.