The home brew turkey baster for insemination (Courtesy: Babymed.com) Can’t conceive? Try IVF. Sure, it recently earned a Nobel Prize but isn’t that like going from 0 to 100 mph just like that? Isn’t there something simpler to do first before IVF? Turkey Basting Well, maybe there is. There are 3 levels of conception technology: No-Tech (sex), Low-Tech (IUI) and High-Tech (IVF). Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is the classic low-tech approach to pregnancy. It involves the placement of a washed sample of ejaculated sperm into the female uterus, well beyond the vagina and cervix where ejaculated sperm normally find themselves after sex. It is performed during ovulation to maximize the chance that sperm meets egg. And, like sex (and unlike IVF-ICSI) it adheres to the
Tag: reproduction
East Meets West in Medicine
The Yin (left) and Yang (right) in all its glory. There I go again, a Western guy giving a lecture to an Eastern crowd. What team do I play on, you ask? In fact, I am honored to give a keynote at the First Integrative Fertility Symposium in Vancouver. Ok, call me a “swingman,” but the Easterners have a lot up their medical sleeves too. Ask Western medicine how to help a guy relax, and they’ll say, “don’t work so hard and take this pill.” Ask an Easterner, and they might suggest acupuncture, mindfulness and meditation. Which approach is better: a patch or a fix? You decide. One Happy Family Eastern and Western medicine have very similar goals – to restore the body to a