Friday, June 12, 2009

Ying and yang

Birth control pills and my stomach are NOT friends. Walking around thinking you could barf at any second is not a pleasant feeling. I went to the acupuncturist on Wednesday and told him my story of woe. The session was targeted for my nausea. Later that evening my stomach rolled worse than the previous 10 days but I have had no nausea since then. Did the acupuncture "cure" my nausea? Or perhaps it was one of the other 10 thousand things I tried to get my stomach to settle down? I don't know but since I am paying 70 bucks a session for the needles, I would like to believe the acupuncture did it. Whatever. It has passed and I am thankful.

The acupuncturist (I've gotta come up with a name for him. . . hum, how about Mr. Green?) made the comment that since I was having such a difficult time with the birth control there was hope that the other IVF drugs would not have such negative side affects for me. I mulled over the comment while I was relaxing and when Mr. Green came back into the room I asked him to tell me more about it.

He used terms of Chinese Traditional Medicine mumbo jumbo about warm and cool blah, blah, blah. But the root of his comments were along the lines of. . . Some meds suppress/cool the body's natural processes and others stimulate/warm the body's natural processes. Balance in the center is best but usually everyone naturally leans to one side or the other. The negative symptoms are felt especially when the body is forced to the opposite side of the spectrum.

This led me to thinking back to my very first visit to the RE and my very first invasion by Wanda (vaginal ultrasound) for IF. That first ultrasound showed that both my right and left ovary were producing a single egg at the same time, naturally. Which leads me to assume that my body naturally is a stimulator/warm. The birth control is an artificial suppressor/cool. Hence why I am experiencing such horrible side affects??? Lupron is also an artificial suppressor/cool, so I am looking forward to more fun times when those shots begin next week. But if the theory holds true, my body is going to love the FSH drugs, which are an artificial stimulator/warm.

Maybe it is the emotional effects of birth control (oh yes! I am feeling those too.) that is making me think so deeply about this or be influenced by Mr. Green's statements but I wanted to record the thoughts so that I can look back later and compare the theory with the actual outcome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a neat take on cool/warm idea. I never thought about it that way. Glad the acupuncture helped withe the nausea :). I had great results after my surgery with acupuncture relieving nausea, so I'm definitely a believer!