Pelvic Care Blog
Our blog is dedicated to supporting acupuncturists who specialize or hope to specialize in pelvic health. We hope you enjoy our musings and offerings.
Why Do Some Postpartum Depression Patients Respond to Acupuncture and Others Don't?
A 2023 clinical trial out of Shenzhen followed 96 postpartum depression patients through 8 weeks of acupuncture and found something worth sitting with. The symptom improvement was real and clinically meaningful, a mean reduction of 5.31 points on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, well past the accepted threshold for a clinically important change.
The Last Practical of 2026 Has Four Seats Left
Seattle sold out. AND Both Montreal dates sold out.
48 acupuncturists said yes to closing the gap in pelvic care this fall, fast enough that I had to close registration early on both coasts. I am sitting with real gratitude this week. Every one of those seats is a practitioner who is about to walk back into clinic with real time needle guidance for pelvic floor dysfunction, hands on palpation training and the confidence to use it Monday morning.
Three Mini Courses This Week Break Down Damp Heat Into What It Actually Is
Damp heat is a single TCM diagnostic name that actually covers three distinct clinical problems, discharge conditions, viral latency conditions and structural mass forming conditions, and most acupuncturists were taught to treat them all the same way. Next week The Pelvic Acu is teaching all three separately, live, free for the first 72 hours after each session.
Pelvic Health Continuing Education for Acupuncturists in Seattle
We are heading back to SIEAM for the Pelvic Care Practical for Acupuncturists on September 12 + 13. Join us for this two day, live, hands-on training with Dr. Krystal Lynn Couture.
A new double blind RCT just published in The Journal of Pain
A new double blind, placebo controlled RCT on acupuncture for vulvodynia was just published in The Journal of Pain. It is the first multi needle, multi session, double blind acupuncture trial ever conducted for this condition. The lead investigator, Dr. Judith Schlaeger at University of Illinois Chicago, partnered with Dr. Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard's Program in Placebo Studies and Dr. Nobuari Takakura in Japan, whose lab developed the only validated double blind acupuncture needles in existence.
How to talk to patients about Pelvic Acupuncture
A colleague asked me recently what I actually say when I bring up the pelvic floor with a patient for the first time. This is the resource I wish I had been handed in my first year of practice. The phrases I come back to. The ones that work in real rooms with real patients.
Acupuncture for Overactive Bladder in Postmenopausal Women
If you've been treating pelvic health conditions for any length of time, you'll know that overactive bladder (OAB) is one of those issues that quietly dominates your patient caseload. Symptoms like urgency, frequency, waking multiple times a night might not make headlines, but they significantly erode quality of life for the women experiencing them. And for postmenopausal women in particular, the burden is disproportionate.
Why Pelvic Health Needs a Voice: My Conversation on Her Voice Shines
Dr. Krystal Couture joins Her Voice Shines to talk pelvic health, the care gap her clients fell into and why this work finally deserves a voice. Listen in.
How to Introduce Your Pelvic Acupuncture Services to Local Healthcare Providers
How do you actually get on the radar of the providers in your community? Not just the pelvic PTs. The OB/GYNs, urogynecologists, REIs, urologists, oncologists, midwives, doulas and pelvic chiropractors who are seeing the same clients you want to serve.
the transcare your clients cannot find anywhere else
Every body has a pelvis, and every body deserves a practitioner ready to treat it. Join the Chicago Pelvic Care Practical on June 20 and 21 and receive the Pelvic Health + Transcare Webinar free this Pride month.
How to Collaborate with Pelvic PTs
Let's talk about what it looks like to actually walk into your community and build referral relationships with pelvic PTs without shrinking yourself in the process. This is the question I hear from acupuncturists more than almost any other. How do I work alongside the pelvic PTs in my area without stepping on their toes? How do I get on their radar without underselling what I do?
Featured in Voyage LA: Closing the Gap, One Acupuncturist at a Time
The interview gave me the chance to say, in one place, the thing I have spent 19 years trying to say.
Someone nominated us for Voyage LA, and I still don't know who.
I got the note that The Pelvic Acu had been chosen for a feature, and I sat with it for a minute, a little teary, because someone out there decided this work was worth pointing a light at. If that someone is reading this: thank you. You have no idea.
We've Been Needling the Pelvic Floor for Thousands of Years
We have been needling the pelvic floor for over two thousand years. So here is the question I want every acupuncturist reading this to sit with: why have we let the pelvic floor become someone else's medicine?
ViRGINIA PELVIC CARE PRACTICAL -MAY 2026
13 women showed up with open hearts, open minds and a desire to serve an underserved population. I'm still marveling at the revelations that manifested during this past weekend's training.
Ashi Points vs. Trigger Points: What Research Tells Us About Dry Needling
As acupuncturists, we have been navigating a quiet identity question for years. A growing number of physical therapists, chiropractors, and athletic trainers are inserting filiform needles into muscle tissue and calling it dry needling. Patients are receiving the work. Insurance is increasingly covering it. And our profession has been left to ask whether what they are doing is, in fact, our medicine practiced under a different name.
PCOS Is Now PMOS. And Honestly? It's About Time.
Something landed in my inbox this morning that stopped me mid sip of tea. PCOS has been officially renamed. As of today, the condition that one in eight women carry, that more than 170 million women worldwide are navigating, is no longer called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. It is now Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome. PMOS.
Chicago Is Next, And I Want You in the Room!
Pelvic Care for Acupuncturists · June 20 + 21, 2026 · Chicago, IL
There is something that happens in the room when a group of acupuncturists comes together to learn pelvic care. I have watched it happen city after city. Practitioners walk in with nervousness that becomes curiosity, and by the end of day two, something has shifted. Not just in what they know, but in how they see the body, how they see their patients, and honestly, how they see themselves.
That is what I am bringing to Chicago this June.
What MSK just published about acupuncture and prostate cancer survivors
JAMA Oncology published a pilot randomized controlled trial out of Memorial Sloan Kettering's Integrative Medicine Service (major props to MSK for their work with cancer AND ACUPUNCTURE). The NOCTURNAL trial. Sixty prostate cancer survivors, mean age seventy two, randomized two to one to either ten weekly acupuncture treatments or a usual care waitlist control. Every participant came in with at least two nocturia episodes per night for the past month. Outcomes were measured with the International Prostate Symptom Score, the validated instrument for this work.
Profound Gratitude
In the years, it took me to build this program and bring it into its current tangible form, I knew it had this potential, but when I look into the eyes of every single practitioner who attends the essence of this medicine becomes real.
Vulvodynia
Vulvodynia affects approximately 7% of American women, yet many suffer for years before receiving an accurate diagnosis. This chronic vulvar pain of unknown origin, lasting at least three months, can devastate intimate relationships and severely impact quality of life. For acupuncturists treating pelvic health conditions, understanding vulvodynia and the growing evidence supporting acupuncture as an effective treatment offers hope to patients who have often exhausted conventional options.