Women in the Capital region who need medical help with fertility challenges don’t have to travel far to get it, thanks to the work of Renee Hubbs.
Hubbs is a licensed acupuncturist and owner of Integrated Health of Mid Michigan in Okemos. She’s helping women conceive and give birth to healthy children, even when more aggressive Western medical approaches have failed.
In her Okemos practice, Hubbs says that more than a quarter of her patients seek her help for fertility problems. And her success rate is phenomenal. “I see anywhere from 200 to 500 women a year for fertility treatment and have an 80 percent success rate (producing a healthy pregnancy),” says Hubbs.
“Some of these women do the natural approach, while others have already worked with ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology). So people come to me from wherever they’re at, and I meet them where they’re at.”
Though based in the Lansing area, Hubbs provides fertility treatment to women from all over central and southeast Michigan. Anyone willing to make the trip to Okemos can benefit from her care.
“All I ask is a commitment of three to four months of treatment and some simple lifestyle changes which greatly increase the odds of having a successful pregnancy,” explains Hubbs,
Groundbreaking AllianceAn import to Michigan, Hubbs has been board certified in Chinese medicine and acupuncture through the state of California for more than 25 years. Thanks to California’s rigorous continuing education requirements—50 units every two years—Hubbs met and began to study with an acupuncturist based in Michigan.
As Hubbs explains, it was 1986 and “He was one of just five board-certified acupuncturists practicing in the state of Michigan at the time, and he needed help.”
So Hubbs came to Michigan in 1990 to work with her teacher in his Battle Creek practice. Eventually, in 1998, she and a partner acquired his practice, and Hubbs moved to Okemos and opened her own practice. “Okemos has been a very welcoming place for me,” Hubbs says, clearly happy with her decision to make the move.
Hubbs is a solo practitioner, but she is far from alone in utilizing Chinese medicine to aid women with fertility issues. Just last year, she became part of an international network of acupuncturists who all specialize in fertility treatment under the guidance of Dr. Randine Lewis, founder of
The Fertile Soul program.
Hubbs is the only Chinese medicine practitioner in Michigan participating in Lewis’ program, which merges the ancient wisdom of Eastern medicine with Western medicine to improve a woman’s chance of a healthy pregnancy.
Lewis has established
The Clinic for Excellence in Fertility, in which practitioners from across the United States, England and Ireland delve into the wide spectrum of fertility problems from an Eastern medicine perspective to optimize outcomes.
Though Hubbs is the only practitioner in Michigan taking The Fertile Soul approach to conception, Hubbs feels supported in her private practice thanks to her involvement with Lewis’ clinic. The practitioners from around the world maintain communication through online forums that allow them to share vital information.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," she says. "We have extreme access to clinical avenues that we may not have been able to access or come up with on our own. Our combined experience just enhances the quality of standards for the profession.”
Integrated ApproachesChinese medicine attempts to integrate the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of healing. It makes use of medicinal herbs and acupuncture to correct imbalances in the body and open energy pathways so the body can heal itself.
“Many times, between the external and internal stress a woman puts on herself, it’s just enough of an imbalance in her system that doesn’t explain why she’s not conceiving, but is enough to prevent conception,” Hubbs says.
Hubbs takes a very individual approach with each of her patients, and is a fully engaged partner in healing. “Some of these women have already had multiple miscarriages and there is an accumulation of grief, so I look at the entire picture.”
Since the male partner contributes half of the information in a pregnancy, Hubbs often treats the partner as well. Sometimes, when inability to conceive is the challenge, couples are encouraged to explore underlying issues to understand their real motivation for having a child.
“Not everybody has to go there," says Hubbs, "but this program encourages considering the emotional or mental blocks people may have about bringing a child into the world, which can carry the liability for inability to conceive just as much as a physical problem can.”
Recently, Hubbs helped a woman who had already tried two different Intra Uterine Insemination (IUI) procedures without success. Hubbs thought the woman’s thyroid was off and, sure enough, tests showed that was the case.
She was put on thyroid medicine. In three weeks, she was pregnant.
“I don’t do a lot of diagnostic work, but I do see patterns through Chinese medicine. And a thyroid imbalance is a pretty simple thing that doctors should not be overlooking, especially when they call themselves ‘reproductive endocrinologists.’” Hubbs says.
“Of course, we have lots of experiential anecdotes (that demonstrate the efficacy of Chinese medicine), but just look at my 80 percent success rate (of successful pregnancies) compared to less than 30 percent in the Western Medicine approach,” she says.
Julia Becker is an East Lansing-based freelance writer and a longtime advocate of alternative health care. She can personally vouch for the benefits of acupuncture and Chinese herbs.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Renee Hubbs at her Okemos practice
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie