Helix Clinic blog

To mark World Allergy Day this year, our practitioner Pia is offering £10 off the first acupuncture treatment booked before 9th December for allergy-related disorders.

Acupuncture can be very effective in the treatment of allergies. Chronic allergy can indicate a deficiency in an aspect of the kidney’s yang energy, that can be remedied over time with a combination of acupuncture, heat treatment (through heat lamp or moxibustion) and attention to dietary factors. For more information, please feel free to contact us with any allergy-specific questions you may have.

Tags: allergies

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)  is set to launch a new website that can provide patients with detailed information on every UK based IVF clinic. IVF success rates have been shown to be almost indistinguishable between clinics, so the new website will allow people to take other information into account when choosing a clinic, from waiting time to multiple birth rates.

Generally the trend has been for IVF success rates to rise for women up to the age of 42. For women between 40 and 42, the 2007 success rates were as high as 12%, increasing to over 32% for women under 35.

The new website is called ‘choose a fertility clinic’, and should be available through the HFEA site soon.

Tags: IVF

One of the main benefits of Chinese Medicine, acupuncture and herbal medicine is that they can help to prevent diseases arising as well as treating symptoms when they do appear. This preventative aspect is one of Traditional Chinese Medicine’s great strengths.

There is currently a lot of public worry about the spread of swine flu, especially when people see news reports of how quickly it is predicted to spread through the population. For those people who want to avoid conventional drug treatments, we have some traditional and natural preventative solutions that can help.

First of all, take some basic measures to keep your immune system strong. We recommend a good dose of Vitamin C and Zinc daily, and continue to eat healthily with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Garlic has very powerful anti-bacterial and anti-viral actions, so eat plenty of it. Echinacea has an immune strengthening effect, and is also a powerful heat clearing herb, so is useful to take if any heat or fever symptoms appear.

At The Helix Clinic we have developed a traditional herbal formula that helps to create a strong defensive barrier to flu viruses. This formula is a variant of one that has been used for hundreds of years in China to guard against flu. We are making this formula available to all patients who can come in to see us, so if you are interested please feel free to contact us for more details.

Tags: herbal formula, swine flu

A recent research study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility has given support to nutritionists who have long advised that eating a healthy diet is important for good sperm quality for couples trying to get pregnant. In essence, men who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables have higher quality sperm that also swims faster.

The Spanish scientists found good quality sperm is a direct result of a diet high in antioxidants found in fruit and vegetables and especially in peppers, citrus fruits and spinach. Alternatively, sperm are fewer and slower in men who eat few antioxidants and instead feast on meat and full-fat dairy products such as cream or cheese.

Lead researcher Jaime Mendiola, of the University of Murcia, Spain, said: “A healthy diet is not only a good way of avoiding illness, but improves the quality of semen.

“Men who eat lots of meat and full-fat dairy products have much poorer quality sperm than those who eat lots of fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products. People who eat more fruits and vegetables are ingesting more antioxidants, and this is the important point.”

The scientists spent four years studying men in two fertility clinics in Spain to see if anything in their diets or exposure to pollution at work was making it difficult for some to father children.  The study included 61 men, 30 of whom had reproductive problems and 31 who didn’t.

Tags: antioxidants, fertility, infertility, sperm quality

Many women who are worried about their f ertility will use an ovulation predictor kit to see if they are ovulating ok. A common query that we encounter is about how reliable the kits are. If the result appears postive, does that necessarily mean that ovulation has occurred?

The thing to remember is that ovulation kits predict impending ovulation by detecting the surge of a hormone called LH, or luteinizing hormone. LH is the catalyst that thrusts the egg out of the ovary during ovulation. When the basal body temperature rises as a result, ovulation has occurred because after ovulation, the leftover follicle (the corpus luteum) that encased the egg in the ovary starts producing progesterone, a heat-inducing hormone.

So, the progesterone causes the basal body temperature to rise, usually a day or two after ovulation, and there is usually a two or three day delay from the LH surge to the temperature rise. The LH surge happens first, then ovulation, and then the temperature rise.

This means that it is possible to have an LH surge and then still not ovulate.  If this happens, the ovulation predictor kit will register positive but the body temperature will not rise to a sustained higher level. This is why it is a good idea to track the temperature as well as use the ovulation predictor kit.

Tags: basal body temperature, fertility, infertility, ovulation