Ep 260: Pinpoint Your Path to Parenthood: Self-Acupuncture for Infertility and Recurrent Pregnancy Loss

In this episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored, hosts Dr. Carrie Bedient from the Fertility Center of Las Vegas, Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center, and Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center welcome special guest Susan Jones from You Healing You. Susan shares her expertise on self-acupuncture and its role in improving fertility outcomes, including addressing infertility, enhancing IVF success, and managing recurrent pregnancy loss. Learn about the science behind self-acupuncture, practical techniques, and how it empowers individuals to take control of their reproductive health. Whether you're navigating IVF or exploring holistic options to support conception, this episode provides valuable insights to guide your journey. Tune in for expert advice and actionable tips on incorporating self-acupuncture into your fertility plan! Have questions about infertility?  Visit FertilityDocsUncensored.com to ask our docs. Selected questions will be answered anonymously in future episodes.

Transcript

Susan Hudson (00:01)

You're listening to the Fertility Docs Uncensored podcast, featuring insight on all things fertility from some of the top rated doctors around America. Whether you're struggling to conceive or just planning for your future family, we're here to guide you every step of the way.

Susan Hudson MD (00:22)

Hello everyone, this is Dr. Susan Hudson from Texas Fertility Center with another episode of Fertility Docs Uncensored. I'm here with my amazing smashing co-host Dr. Carrie Bedient from Fertility Center of Las Vegas.

Carrie Bedient MD (00:34)

Hello

Susan Hudson MD (00:36)

and Dr. Abby Eblen from Nashville Fertility Center.

Abby Eblen MD (00:39)

Hi everybody.

Susan Hudson MD (00:41)

And we are so excited to have a guest today. We have Susan Jones. Hey, Susan.

Susan Jones (00:47)

Hi everybody, thanks for having me on.

Susan Hudson MD (00:50)

She is co-founder of You Healing You, which we're gonna learn all about in a few minutes, and she's also a licensed therapist and acupuncturist. So really aiming everything from head, mind, and body, and soul, and getting it all where it needs to be when it comes to your fertility journey. So talking about journeys, I understand you had an interesting journey yourself.

Susan Jones (01:15)

Yes, that's right. About 20, 25 years ago, I was got super obsessed with climate change and sustainability. So I wanted to just what can one person do? So I created a tour across America from Charleston, South Carolina to Google headquarters, which was our final destination. And we set the Guinness record for the longest journey on electric vehicles.

Abby Eblen MD (01:32)

Wow, so that was in the United States and I was thinking it was in a different country because you've lived in a lot of different countries.

Susan Jones (01:41)

Yes, I have. So that was 44 days of all electric vehicles. There was the car, the Nissan Leaf, the motorcycle, my scooter. I own the scooter company and then the bicycle. And we traveled for 44 days and it was a beautiful trip. Wow. I mean, seeing America on sitting on a scooter is incredible. I highly recommend it. You see everything, smell everything. It was amazing.

Abby Eblen MD (01:57)

This so cool.

Hahaha!

Carrie Bedient MD (02:07)

How did that work with setting a Guinness world record? What did you have to do to document it so that they approve?

Susan Hudson MD (02:07)

That's very neat.

Susan Jones (02:08)

Yeah. Well, that's actually a really good question. That's very tough. It's not easy. And, no offense to Guinness, but the more money you pay, the easier it gets. But you do, all of your odometers have to be monitored constantly. There's a lot that goes into actually proving. And if you pay a little bit, you know, a bunch more money, they actually come with a representative and there's a big to do and they have cameras. 

But I actually footed the bill for the entire thing for 12 people, which paid off for years after that. And so I definitely wasn't looking to spend more money on any of that, but we did. We set the Guinness record and it was filmed the whole way. Had a documentarian there with cameras and lighting guy and they would hang out the side of the van and film us.

And we did interviews in every city. So it will one day soon, I hope, be a documentary that everyone can tune into and watch. Yay. And now three of us, I have the electric BMW, the i3. I love it. I feel like I'm driving for free. Like it's so great. You just charge up and go. No gas stations. Yep.

Abby Eblen MD (03:13)

And at least two of us have electric cars too, so you're way ahead of your time, so that's very cool. Three of us.

Carrie Bedient MD (03:13)

That's so cool.

And I have a hybrid.

Susan Hudson MD (03:30)

It's amazing.

We still have one gas vehicle that my children are learning how to drive on. And every time I have to go to the gas station, which for me is only like once a year when I randomly have to drive the truck, I'm just like, ugh, I hate going to the gas.

Susan Jones (03:32)

I know, I know. Sometimes I take my sister's car and fill it up for her, and it was because she drives me back and forth to the airport a lot, when I fly and I just want to fill it. I hate putting my money in this. It feels like such a waste. No offense to gas powered car owners, but it just is so easy and simple. You just plug in and go to sleep and it's all charged. You go again.

Abby Eblen MD (04:00)

Yep. Very nice.

Susan Hudson MD (04:09)

Good thing, it's a good thing. All right, well let's do our question of the day. So here's our question. I love your podcast and you have made infertility feel less scary. Thank you so much for listening. I'm a 29 year old female and my husband is also 29. We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility after 12 months of trying to conceive. No blocked tubes, no uterine abnormality, AMH 1.79, normal blood work, normal cycles.

Partner's motility was 34 % and then had a low sperm count for their first IUI. His sperm is now all normal, in the normal range with lifestyle changes. They've done two IUIs and they became pregnant on a canceled IUI cycle because she over responded to Clomid earlier in the year. However, unfortunately miscarried at five weeks and three days.

My clinic is only willing to do one more IUI cycle and we have our consult for IVF this week. Do you think it's too soon to explore IVF?

Great question.

Abby Eblen MD (05:09)

Yeah, I mean, I think she's young. Everything seems to be working properly. After only two IUIs, she got pregnant. Of course, we know that about 50 % of time if somebody miscarries, it's due to genetic abnormality. So it could have just been bad luck. I think the advantage of IVF is it's the quickest route to pregnancy and the most successful. But when you're 29, you got pregnant on your second IUI, if you were my patient, I probably would suggest that you try some more IUI cycles because you may very well get pregnant pretty quickly. And then if you don't, I mean, you're still 29, you're still young, you could still do IVF at that point.

Carrie Bedient MD (05:44)

Emotional resilience plays a large role in this. So I have some patients who they really are dedicated to wanting to pursue more IUIs and I have others who they know they're already on the edge and they need to get pregnant as soon as possible because they just are at the end of their tolerance for going through fertility treatments. So I think that should play a role in things. I also think that doing a test like a Sperm QT might be helpful because that is looking at the functionality in addition to just the straight parameters of the sperm, meaning it's not just the sperm count and the movement, but it's also what is the underlying quality. And so if that comes back as an abnormal result, you may jump to IVF a little faster versus if it comes back normal, you may be more willing to keep going with IUIs. I don't know that you're really unexplained given that you did see a lower sperm count on that IUI and a slightly lower motility.

Sometimes that's explainable by something obvious that happened. Let's say he got sick and had a fever and so that's why it dropped. Other times that may actually be shedding a little bit of light on why you're having difficulty getting pregnant.

Susan Hudson MD (06:49)

In this situation I would often let somebody do another couple of IUI cycles if they really wanted to. I mean we've proven that they can have fertilization, we can have implantation. I totally agree with the emotional quotient that if you're done you're done, but just by the fact that you're asking I'm thinking you're wanting to go a little bit more slowly. So if you had not conceived after three cycles, I'm generally recommending IVF, which I think would be the same for both Carrie and Abby here. But having a pregnancy that resulted in miscarriage does throw another little caveat in there. And so if you wanted to do a total of maybe three completely total unsuccessful IUIs, and hopefully you become successful on one of those, I think that's fine. But I wouldn't do six or 12.

Carrie Bedient MD (07:47)

Absolutely.

Susan Hudson MD (07:49)

So, on to the rest of our show. We're so excited again to have Susan Jones with us. Susan, can you first of all, let's address a little bit about what exactly is acupuncture and how does it fit into the fertility world?

Susan Jones (08:05)

Okay, sure. So acupuncture is your body's way of naturally repairing something that has gotten out of balance. And if we're going to hone in specifically right away to fertility to make best use of our time, what can happen in the human body is the body temperature, the internal temperature, not like thermometer temperature, but the internal body temperature that is controlled by an organ in your body called the triple heater organ.

Then there's also the kidneys those two organs can sometimes be out of balance. So when I first started doing acupuncture 26 years ago I would have people come in and they had not even started IVF yet because this was a long time ago. I would notice that these two things are off and then consistently over the years, it's always been the same and you'll even feel the freezing cold hands, the freezing feet. I'm sure you guys see this a lot. After a certain number of years everyone who came to me for fertility was already going to IVF. So if IVF hadn't worked for them yet as quickly as they wanted, then they would add acupuncture as an adjunct. And it proved to be very successful for really, like almost everyone. And really it's so simple. It comes down to these two things that IVF is doing all the things they do, but when we swoop in and we do what we do, by putting in these tiny little needles that go into very specific places. And they make that chi, which is like your electricity, this flow of energy through your body, it goes into that organ and where the chi goes, blood follows. That's the law of nature, where chi goes, blood follows. So blood really has everything that heals the human body. So anything that is deficient or has any kind of breakdown, if you can make that chi flow and the blood flow, it will make that organ regenerate. In Chinese medicine, they say that the kidneys are responsible for conception. So if you target the kidneys, doing points specifically that go to the kidney organ, and then also I've noticed after observing many years, it's also the body temperature. Those two things are generally the reason why they're just not getting pregnant right away with IVF.

All the others get pregnant with IVF and then we don't need to see them. They have their baby and they're at home happy. So when you add the acupuncture, now what we do at You Healing You, so Shelby and I met in acupuncture school. She's my business partner and we were treating people year after year, always the same formula and it works. It's great. It's a great formula. But when people are 39, 40, 41 and the clock is ticking, we really wanted to give them the most help, the quickest. And they were coming to us every day because they want a baby like yesterday, as you guys all know, right? So, we all know how that is. They were, and they were paying to come every day and paying for IVF, which was a lot. So then I started with one person, one person, one person. I'd like, these are the points we have to do consistently. I'm going to teach you how to do it.

So the same way you guys teach them how to do the syringe and they do their shots at home, same thing. So I taught them and they would do it and then it actually things moved exponentially faster, I noticed. So then I called Shelby one day and I'm like, hey, we should do this in groups. And she's like, my God, what do mean? I said, no, listen, listen. So it took me about a year to convince her and I told her about this patient and that patient and real stories of real people. And so that's how You Healing You was formed.

Abby Eblen MD (11:35)

So Susan, can I stop you? I ask a question? So tell me a little bit more about the heat and the energy. How are you able to measure that? Because if you can't measure it with a thermometer, how else do you measure that? Because you said there was a higher heat in people who were not able to get.

Susan Jones (11:35)

And yeah, sure. Well, when you ask a person, do you feel hot or cold? You know the person and sweat also accompanies that. And you feel their hands and their feet topically, you feel them and they're freezing cold. I'm sure you guys have noticed this, right? With a lot of women. And so they know that everybody else in the room is fine and they're freezing and they have on a sweater. And also there is a pulse. So you have a pulse for every organ in your body. And it's right here on your wrist and you feel just like you would feel like that radial pulse, but it's not the radial pulse. It's there's three positions on this side and three positions on this side. Three are superficial and three are deep. So there's 12 organs and 12 pulses. So if I want to feel how is that organ functioning, I put my hands down and I feel the pulse that corresponds directly to that organ.

Does that make sense? The same way you would feel the beats per minute of the heart, we rely on that. We know, okay, we know what that is. It's not made up. It's not magic. We know exactly what it corresponds to. It's like that. You'll feel for quantity and quality. And living in Thailand for 12 years and treating there, I don't even have to speak the same language as someone. As soon as I feel their pulses, I know exactly what's happening at an organ level.

And any symptom you ever have, whether it's cancer or hair loss or fertility issues, it's all going to relate back to the functioning of an organ. And if you can fix the organ, then you can assist the body in doing the conception process. The same way IVF is assisting for the things that are needed, this is helping assist within the other areas that are needed. So when we combine the IVF and the acupuncture, it's like a winning formula.

And there's plenty of people who can just do the IVF and they won't need this. But we're suggesting if you want it to work faster or if you already had issues with trying and trying and then you need extra help, it's probably more than likely these two organs that have just gotten out of balance. And then when we do these points and when they do these points on themselves very regularly, so the key word here is consistency. That's really what it comes down to.

Susan Hudson MD (14:05)

One thing for our listeners, most of the published literature looking at things like IVF and acupuncture working together really shows that acupuncture can definitely augment success outcomes, but it's not a one-time thing. So it's not, you don't go one time and get needles put in you and then you're fixed and ready to go. It's something that requires multiple times a week for you to spend time having these needles put in, having them have their effect and that type of thing. We've recently had vitamin episodes where we talk about you have to take vitamins for a certain amount of months for them to have their full effect. It's a similar idea with acupuncture. It's not a one and done type of thing.

Susan Jones (14:59)

Absolutely.

Susan Hudson MD (15:00)

In some of our previous conversations with Susan, really the idea of You Healing You has come out of almost a convenience factor for all of our patients in that going to an acupuncturist, number one, there's a lot of people who don't have a acupuncturist locally, okay?

Or they don't have the ability for multiple times a week to take that out of their schedule to actually go to another place. Is that correct, Susan?

Susan Jones (15:31)

Absolutely. It's all those things. It's the time that it takes. It's the money that it takes. And they've already, by the time we get them, they're pretty heavily committed to their IVF and they are never leaving IVF by the way. And we wouldn't want them to, but we feel like they're so heavily invested on this path. And all we have to do is sort of come in and just give them that extra push that they need. And financially, they're paying for that. So if they can learn, it's in our two-day seminar that's immersive and they really are very practiced when they leave on that second night, they have it in their body. They got it. We did it over and over. We go home, we sleep on it. You come again the next day, do it over and over. And by the time they leave, they're very confident. And we make it so simple for them because we just mark out the certain points.

They don't even need a lot of points, just a few certain points. And we use these little like surgical pens, that leave a black mark. And then all they have to know, they don't have to think about where is the point. I'm in the right place. They just set the tube down. You tap it, move it up and down and let it sit. Watch a movie, work on your computer, do whatever you need to do. And if you do that consistently, will allow the body to shift and change and move day after day after day much faster. And so the internal body temperature and the strength of the kidneys to perform conception in the body with the uterus and ovaries, because when you treat the kidneys, it feeds into the uterus and ovaries and makes them stronger. And a lot of times the doctors will say, how did your count get up so high? And like, while I'm doing acupuncture. So those organs will kick in and function better if you do the acupuncture. So after many years of us being the person who does it for them, we now let them do it for themselves. And I am much happier with knowing that they can do it for themselves and not have to spend all that money coming every day.

Abby Eblen MD (17:31)

How would somebody know if they needed to see you or if they, because you said not everybody needs to do this if they're gonna do IVF. So how do you do that remotely or teach them how to check that remotely?

Susan Jones (17:41)

Well, when somebody's gotten to the point when they're going to do IVF, they're really ready to be pregnant yesterday. So ideally, if they're really going to cover all of their bases, they would just go ahead and do the two-day training, get it under the belt, and start that along with everything else. But the thing that when we met together in person in Denver, one of the things I said is that, for example, coffee or all these things that are nutritionally or things in their lifestyle that come into the heading of lifestyle. And you guys had expressed that you give very individual attention to all your patients and that's why they keep coming to you and trust you so much. But also your time is very valuable and very limited. But when we do this two day training, we can tell them all of these things and give them the handouts and give them things to read. So we do a lot of hands on holding that we have time to do in our seminar that maybe wherever they're going for IVF, it's hard for the individual person to give them all this information. And so it really is a combination of all of these things. It's IVF, it's the acupuncture and some of the changes that they need to make that they just didn't know. Like, it's Western medicine that did the study that shows that coffee is very depleting to the kidneys. And some of them might think, well, so what? But they don't know the connection between kidneys and conception.

And this is all fine in theory in a book, but I have done it over and over and over for 26 years and it is accurate. If you feel the pulse is low and the kidneys and the triple heater and then you treat those organs, then the person does conceive. So I 100 % trust it after all these years of seeing it firsthand with my own eyes and people in different countries, ages, ethnicities, like all across the board.

So I like the idea that they have the power in their own hands to go home and treat themselves every day. And then I would say start right away when you do IVF, but if you don't want to, you have your faith that IVF is going to be all you need, then great. Then if you don't get pregnant with however many rounds you feel comfortable not getting pregnant yet, then I would add in doing the two-day seminar and adding the acupuncture along with it.

Susan Hudson MD (19:59)

We have a lot of patients in our clinic who never do IVF. Either we don't think they necessarily need it or they don't want it or for whatever reason IVF's not on the table. Are your acupuncture treatments helpful for people who are trying things like just trying to get pregnant on their own or if they're still seeking fertility care but maybe doing things like ovulation induction with intrauterine insemination and things like that?

Susan Jones (20:28)

It's absolutely helpful. The whole body is always working in unison with each other. You can't have one thing that's deficient and out of balance and think that everybody else is just going to go along. It's a symphony, right? Everything works together. So when you do the acupuncture and you go to see an acupuncturist, they treat the whole body. And so everything is being tuned up, is being heightened. And also, the one thing I wanted to just pitch in one little thing with the patient that you read, one thing we do that we give to our patients and in the seminar we teach people is, this is a process. And I felt like what she was saying was pretty normal and it is a process. And so if she just has ease with that and gives herself a little bit of a break that it's okay that you didn't get pregnant right away and it's okay that you had a miscarriage.

It's more common than you think. And when I was in my 20s and I was teaching prenatal aerobics classes, out of every six weeks, I would have a whole new group of eight women. And out of eight women, there was always two or three, every single time who'd had at least one, two or three miscarriages. And I'm like, hmm, okay, that's interesting. That's the average normal person. And so if they hear that, it gives them much more ease and peace of mind to know that, okay, it's just another step along the journey. We'll get there.

And the more they hear what to expect from lots of other people's experiences, it really helps them weather that storm in getting there. And the more we're confident about what we're saying to them, they see that, they know, and they can trust that, okay, it's all gonna work out. We can't promise them the moon, but we can say that our experience has shown step by step by step by step if you do all these things it will typically lead to success. And that's what we give people.

Abby Eblen MD (22:19)

For someone who's never done acupuncture and knows it, can you kind of give us some nuts and bolts about how it all works and what the needles look like and what it feels like and how often they have to do it?

Susan Jones (22:30)

Yeah, sure. It's, I mean, 26 years ago, people would say, what's acupuncture? I mean, these days I rarely have to explain that to people because it's in movies and TV shows and stuff. But yes, I would love to explain that on a more nuts and bolts level. So the thickness of the needle is the size of three hairs on your head. So it's very fine and it has a little spindle on the top that you hold onto and it comes in a tube. So you set the tube down on this point right here, you set the tube down and then you tap, tap, tap and it goes into the skin and you just remove the tube. Normally you have two hands to needle but on this point you have one and then you remove the tube and you just move it up and down, up and down. And when you do that, you're calling the chi and there's this electricity that flows under the skin here all the way.

Susan Hudson MD (23:16)

So for those of you who are listening only, she's pointing to the point of your hand where your thumb and your pointer finger kind of come together on the dorsal or not palmar side of your hand.

Susan Jones (23:31)

Okay, thank you for reminding me that some people are not visual. Okay, so on your hand and the V on the top of your hand, there's a point, it's a large intestine for, a very important point. And if you put the tube down on any point, like this one, and you just tap the needle, and most people will, like if I'm treating someone and I tap, say, okay, well let me know when it's in. I'm like, well it's in. I mean, they really don't feel the needle going in. But then if I do this and I start moving the needle up and down slowly, very gently, slowly, up and down, and I turn it clockwise, up and down, that's called calling the chi. It's kind of like when they go out in the field and they drill for oil and that thing goes up and down and then the oil starts spewing, right? So that's kind like when you needle, you just go and you call the chi gently, slowly, and then all of a sudden you feel this, like, feel pressure, and then it gets warm, and then it just kind of like, ooh, it kind of like flows up your arm or it can go down the leg, and that's how you know you're in the chi.

And that's how you know you're alive. That's your vital force of energy. And the more you do that, the more alive you become on every level. Mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, sexual, like your body really enlivens. I mean, the way I look at it is very much like when a plant has been put in a closet in the dark and you open the door, bring it out, put it in the sun, in the window, and then water it.

That's literally to me what I observe with my patients. That's what happens when you start putting needles in. The body just starts thriving in all different ways. So it's very important. The body is so genius that it doesn't want the body to make a baby unless that baby is going to be super healthy and can function. So it's just helping you. That's all. If it's not giving you a baby right away, it's just helping you. And it's helping you get to the point where you do certain things that you get strong enough and virile enough to create a human life. Yes.

Carrie Bedient MD (25:32)

Can you do it wrong? Let's say you go through and you do, you label all those points and then, you take a shower or whatever, it rubs off or you take some time and it rubs off and you go back to do it and you accidentally put it in the wrong places. Can that cause unbalance? Can that impair things?

Susan Jones (25:52)

That's a really, that's a good question and needs to be answered. The answer is no. Really what would happen is if you're off the point by a lot, it might be like, ow, that pricks, that hurts, but you're not really gonna hurt anything. And mostly what's gonna happen is you'll just be less effective if you're not really in the chi. Because when you start to feel that sort of electricity, when you put the needle in and you'll feel like, It'll be nothing, nothing, tingling, tingling, radiating, thickness, warmth. You'll feel that then things are rushing. You can put a needle in almost anywhere and it's not gonna hurt you. It's just not gonna be as effective as if you're really in the point. So we teach people to actually learn how to feel for the Chi. And then when you do that, you know you're in the point.

And it doesn't take long, like we do our seminars and by the way, we follow up with everyone. They don't just come for two days and then you're thrown out back to sea. We are very hands-on and we give them lots of things to take home. They have videos and we have a forum where everybody can message in and ask their questions so everybody gets the benefit of the question and the answer. Sometimes I just get on video chat with them on our phones and sometimes I make a video and send to them. It takes me one minute.

I make a video I send to them or they send me a video of something you're needling and they have a question. It's really more they just need hand holding more than anything. They're doing it right. They need reassurance. Exactly. And so we're a hundred percent, that's part of our training. We're not only willing, but we expect that we will give you follow-up because it's really important that you get this thoroughly and you get confident with it.

Susan Hudson MD (27:16)

They need reassurance.

So are your sessions, you had mentioned that they're in person. How often do you have these in-person sessions and where in the United States are you having these sessions at currently?

Susan Jones (27:47)

We can go to any state. set our cities and our times and then we project onto that city and we tell doctors that we're coming. But then we also have had many situations where people ask us to come. So we've typically done Saturdays and Sundays thinking that's just the best for people's families that are working or whatever. So we do Saturday, Sunday, and we can come to any city.

And if someone wants us to come, just get enough people to come and then we come and do the seminar on those dates.

Susan Hudson MD (28:22)

You had mentioned miscarriages and miscarriages and infertility are a little bit different. When you're doing acupuncture for miscarriage, how does that differ from when you're doing other types of infertility treatment?

Susan Jones (28:29)

Well, I hope my answer answers your question, but one thing when you started saying that there's something I really want to say to any of your listeners, and that is that, well, for one, I worked for like 14 years in New York City, and then even in Bangkok, women these days are working women. And it's a good thing that we're empowered and we're strong and we're athletic, and it's all good. Our evolution is good. However, I hope you guys agree with me on this, but a lot of times when a woman is trying to get pregnant or they've just newly become pregnant, they don't change certain things in their lifestyle. I personally, I was in my twenties and I was an athlete and I still stopped. It just didn't feel right to me, but I know women, they're lifting heavy things or they're going up and down three flights in the subway and then they're in the cold.

What I've found over the years is if you just set aside this time in your life to just take things a little easier, have somebody else lift that heavy thing. This is more under the heading of prevention of miscarriage. But the mindset is that you start to adjust. And I love that it's nature, because once we become moms, we have to adjust.

There are certain things that we could do that we just can't run around and do those things anymore because there's a baby right there sleeping and you have to stay right there with the baby. So this, I love the beauty of the whole fertility and how it sort of molds us into becoming moms. And one of it is stop doing all these things that you used to do and ask for help and let somebody else do them and work more at treating your body more like a temple and very carefully and just it's a little seed that has to implant. So just give the baby time to grow and become solid in the system. Because a lot of women, and that's what I've seen happen is they still keep up their athletics, their work schedule, the long hours and the trekking and schlepping across New York City and the wind and the snow and the rain and carrying lots of things. When I've asked them to stop doing that because of some things that have happened, then they stopped doing it then they are successful. So that shows that, okay, that's probably a good thing. It's not a bad thing for sure. So that's the one thing I wanted to say to your listeners about becoming pregnant and then after you are pregnant.

Does that answer your question at all or did I totally veer off?

Susan Hudson MD (31:04)

Does it change when you're dealing with infertility versus recurrent pregnancy loss?

Susan Jones (31:05)

Okay. So what it means to me, if there is recurrent, if they've had five or six miscarriages, which I've had many patients that have, it just tells me the level, the depth of how much work we have to do. That's really what it means. And that would just tell me that, okay, they definitely need to be doing the seminar and needling themselves because they need more. That's what it tells me. The points would be the same because it's still the same deficiency at the organ level.

You'll still treat the same thing, and I would tell them psychologically, emotionally, I would tell them, okay, this is the trek we're on. This is what it means. It's not good or bad. It just is what it is, and we're on this path together, and we're going to get there. Don't worry. We're going to get there, but these are the things that need to happen in this process. You need to do these points seriously, religiously, because your body is not dipped down to the level of three. It's dipped down to the level of five, and that's fine.

Nothing to cry about, let's just like accept this is where our starting point is and then we just build from there. And they will be able to see, that's the good part, is they'll see things, how they're building and building and how things are operating much better in their system.

Susan Hudson MD (32:20)

That interesting because I often find my patients with recurrent pregnancy loss are some of the hardest to convince that they need help because they're like well everything's fine because I'm getting pregnant I'm just not staying pregnant and so it's just it's very enlightening to hear that that can actually be a sign of something even more significant that it's not sticking.

Susan Jones (32:45)

Yes.

Abby Eblen MD (32:46)

Susan, what are the points? Are there several points? Are they the same points? Are they different for different people that you focus on or target for these issues for infertility and for miscarriage?

Susan Jones (32:56)

That's really good question. There's one main point that is called your kidney three. So every organ has a little line, a pathway that flows into it and that's called a meridian. And then on the meridians, there are these points along the meridian and on everyone there's one main point. We call it the source point. And that is kidney three for kidneys. And it's right on the inside of your ankle.

So it's easy to reach in all the points that we teach people are easy to reach, easy to needle, easy to find. And so that's the main one that we always say. And then there's one on the palm of the hand for the body temperature and on the arm. There's one, you go up the pinky finger and then go up the outside of the arm and travel all the way up, right before you get to the elbow, there's a point there that is excellent for regulating the body temperature. And I guarantee you, anybody listening to this podcast, because they have an interest, a real strong personal interest, they are going to get what I'm saying immediately. They will know about the body temperature. They know their body temperature is off. It's not a question.

So they'll need to needle this point either on the palm or on the arm. And then there's one on the inside of the ankle. So this is the triple heater, which regulates your body temperature and sweating. And they'll be like, yeah, I also have a problem with sweating. It's either off where they don't sweat at all or they sweat profusely, which is embarrassing and no one likes that. And then there's also a couple of other points that we put in there because they are easy to find, easy to needle, and they can handle doing them. We do a stomach point on the outside of the leg, and we do a spleen right above your knee cap towards the inside. It's very easy to find, and it's called sea of blood. So when Western Medicine did studies, and they put these tiny little cameras in the body, and they want to observe what happens when you do this.

Nothing is going on, they do the cameras, and then the study shows that as soon as you put the acupuncture needle in spleen 10 on the right above the knee on the left side of the leg on the inside, the body will start manufacturing fresh red blood cells, which is interesting because they named that point sea of blood thousands of years ago, so they obviously knew this. So I figure the one thing that every human, especially somebody wanting to conceive, is we need more blood, healthy blood. Blood is very critical to the success of anything healing or any function in the body. So I think that's a very worthwhile point to teach them if they're only going to learn a few. So these are the ones.

Carrie Bedient MD (35:47)

How long do you have to do the needling, the treatments to reasonably see a result? Is it one month, six months, a year? For an average patient, someone who's not severely affected where they're going to a point five or six instead of kind of a more average three, how long does it take?

Susan Jones (36:03)

Right. Well, just to back up a little bit, if a person has gone to IVF or gone to see a fertility specialist most of the time, I mean, there already is something that they're having to really work on. Do we all agree with that? Okay. I mean, otherwise they would just get pregnant on their own or whoops, accidentally I got pregnant. Right? So that didn't happen. They've already, okay, this is the help I need.

Abby Eblen MD (36:19)

Thank you.

Susan Jones (36:28)

So if they're coming to me after they've already been with IVF for a while, then that's already a measuring stick right there. Why are they even needing to come see me if they've been doing IVF? So, and it's because what you guys do is covering all of those bases that they need. And then we come in with the adjunct of covering these other bases that is critical to making what you do work and work more quickly. So I will say on average, if a person didn't get pregnant on their own and a person didn't get pregnant using only IVF, then I would say we're a little bit behind the eight ball. So I would not expect for it to be overnight. Now, you also have to remember for 26 years, I did this by myself with the patient. And sometimes they would come every day, but sometimes they're coming every week. But the minute you start doing it every day on yourself, it will be exponentially faster.

And it has been with anything I've been treating. That is just a fact. It's the same as going to the gym. If you go to the gym once a week versus if you go to the gym every day, your results will be very specifically to this amount or to this amount. I'm sure we all understand that very clearly. And it really is exactly the same thing because the same way you're building a muscle in the gym, you're regenerating an organ when you put in the needles, you're making more blood, you're like everything, the body temperature, everything, the hormone levels, everything will adapt towards homeostasis, the perfect balance. Your body knows how to do that as soon as you put the needle in. So I would say to be, you know, okay, just commit to an answer, Susan. I would say at least three months and probably six months and worst case scenario, a year. That would be an average for most people who've didn't get on their own, didn't with IVF and now they're doing acupuncture.

Susan Hudson MD (38:28)

If they're doing this at home, how do they know when they're ready to go to another IVF cycle?

Susan Jones (38:33)

If they're needling themselves at home, they stay everything that you do with your patient and what you tell them. They do everything exactly the way you tell them.

Susan Hudson MD (38:43)

What I'm saying is say they weren't getting pregnant, they come in to see us, we're like, we need to do IVF, they do IVF, they fail. Now they're deciding to go down the acupuncture route before starting another IVF cycle. Do they know?

Susan Jones (38:57)

No, we don't we don't do that. No, they stay whatever your program is for them with the IVF cycles. They continue on that Does that make sense?

Susan Hudson MD (39:07)

I guess, okay, so, like none of us practice in mandated states, so realistically, if people are paying cash, most average Americans, if they can afford IVF, are not going to pay for more than two if they're paying out of pocket. There's the exception to every rule. But what I'm saying is, if they're trying to figure out when do I either start IVF or when do I do my next IVF cycle with hopefully the positive impact from the acupuncture, how do they know my chi is in the right place?

Susan Jones (39:42)

Okay. All right. In that situation, that's not my experience by the way. In my practice, their IVF doctors have them on a schedule and I do everything around their IVF schedule. It is really purely an adjunct. I'm never saying that you're setting that aside and we're going to go for this. I don't do that because it's too important. This is, I mean, like I said, they want to be pregnant yesterday, and they are not going to be happy and they can't sleep until they get pregnant. This is the state that they're in once we get them. So I want them to do everything and we just add to what they're doing. But if I answered the question the way you posed it, would say, so I am going to have you be doing the acupuncture, needling yourself every day. Once you've done the training, you'll do it every day. And then I would say, okay, tell me I would ask about certain body systems, sleep, appetite, digestion, bowels, urination, body temperature, emotions, and I would be able to assess, okay, where things are. And then I would say, okay, now I think you're at the point where you can go back to see your doctor and then they will tell you if this is a good time to do your next IVF round. That's what I would do in that situation. That actually doesn't happen to me. They are on a schedule with their doctors and nothing is going to stop that. And I am just, I come in as an adjunct.

Abby Eblen MD (41:00)

Yeah, so you can add to it.

That's it.

Susan Hudson MD (41:05)

Okay, that helps. That helps figure that out. Well, I think we have learned so much today about not only acupuncture in general, but also ways that people can work with acupuncture in their own home. And I think what you're providing through You Healing You is a very unique situation, but I think it's probably a very needed one.

If people were wanting to reach out to You Healing You, what is the best way for them to learn more about You Healing You and get in touch with you and your co-founder?

Susan Jones (41:39)

Great. So go to youhealingyou.com and you will see all about us. You can see what our seminars look like, what we do. You can learn more about it. I want to be upfront. Okay. I know that this is, we are way out ahead. We are forging new trails that's never been done. And even acupuncture may still sound strange to some people in 2024, but you needling yourself. Sounds very strange. So what we remind them is that you you put that syringe in never thought twice about that when your doctor told you to do it so this is way easier than that. So go on this on the website and you'll see everything read about us and our backgrounds and our bios and you'll get more and more comfortable but you know bottom line is it is we are pioneers and nobody's done this before.

Abby Eblen MD (42:14)

Yeah, that's right.

Susan Jones (42:33)

But more and more, if you want to talk to someone who's done this and they can vouch for what it's like to be a self-needler, you can talk to our other people who've done the seminars and that may, and just reach out to us on that little, where you can contact us on the website and we'll get back to you right away.

Susan Hudson MD (42:53)

And you also have a presence on Instagram as well, correct? Fantastic, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and thank you to our audience. We appreciate you listening and want to remind you to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to have next Tuesday's episode pop up automatically for you. Also be sure to subscribe to YouTube. That really helps us spread reliable information and help as many people as possible.

Susan Jones (42:55)

Yeah, you can go on Instagram. I just want to add to very, very, very briefly, thank you as Western doctors for being open to us merging and working together. I think, you know, in modern times, it's time that we all did that. I think we can both benefit from each other.

Susan Hudson MD (43:33)

Well, I can say when I did my IVF cycle, I used acupuncture that time too.

Susan Jones (43:37)

Good, that's awesome. Well, thank you for having me.

Abby Eblen MD (43:40)

Thanks for being here. And to our listeners, can also visit us on fertilitydocsuncensored.com to submit specific questions you have and to sign up for our email list.

Susan Hudson MD (43:49)

As always, this podcast is intended for entertainment and is not a substitute for medical advice from your own physician. Subscribe, sign up for emails, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye!

Susan Jones (43:59)

Thank you.