Have you ever wondered what the research says about acupuncture for issues during pregnancy like back pain, anxiety, morning sickness or moxibustion for turning a breech baby? And what about safety- is there any research on this?

With so much information at your fingertips, it can be really overwhelming to tell what is based on good research or expert opinion, and what is misinformation or the casual opinion of a social media influencer. I’ve created a free guide to help you cut through all the noise and give solid, research backed information about each topic. I hope this will save you time and aggravation, and help you feel clear and purposeful in the decisions you make for yourself during pregnancy.

I have created a guide to 10 perinatal health topics that summarizes the research and provides additional trustworthy resources so you can learn more. Click here to access the Perinatal Acupuncture Research Summaries Project.

My process in creating this guide:

Most information was drawn from Cochrane Reviews and other systematic reviews, with information from selected individual studies that are well-designed and add interesting information to the conversation. For each topic I kept a spreadsheet with details from each study including key findings and measures of the quality of the study.

Who is the guide for?

• For Pregnant People: you’ll learn more about your options and what might help you. I’m not here to try and convince you that acupuncture is a cure-all, just to give you info on what the research says, information on what real-life treatments are like from the perspective of an acupuncturist with nearly 12 years’ experience, and resource guides for each topic with links to trustworthy information where you can learn more.
• For Health Care Providers: you’ll learn more about what the research says and how acupuncture might be able to help your pregnant or postpartum patients. A more detailed research summary is available at the bottom of every page with links to the studies cited. The research summaries always prioritize findings from the highest level of research available- Cochrane Reviews for most topics, and systematic reviews and well-designed RCT’s for others. For some topics, pragmatic studies or case reports are the only available research or are truly valuable additions to the conversation, and this is noted.
• For other Acupuncturists or Acupuncture Students: an additional section that might be of interest is the “Special Acupuncture Research Considerations” page. Here you’ll find discussion and links to papers discussing how to tell if an acupuncture research study is of good quality, the topic of placebo in acupuncture research, and info on other important topics such as the value of pragmatic studies and qualitative research as well as determining appropriate acupuncture dosage in studies.

I welcome your questions and feedback- please reach out to me via the website or Instagram, and sign up for my monthly newsletter to stay updated on the project.