By Jackie

When you go to see a general practitioner with a set of health complaints, he or she will certainly want to hear your list of symptoms. But when it comes time to specifically determine the cause or choose a treatment option, some doctors feel their patients will be better served by a specialist.

While specialists can certainly be helpful, the “referral routine” quickly becomes tiresome when you are passed from specialist to specialist with unexplained pain or dysfunction. Specialists can thoroughly examine the problem from their perspective and provide answers, but sometimes, they cannot catch connections between different bodily systems or distant structures. It is certainly not their fault; specialists are experts in one area and are trained to examine, diagnose, and treat this area day-in and day-out.

A classic example is unexplained infertility. If you are a female and experience problems conceiving, your general practitioner will recommend you speak with a gynecologist. When your gynecologist cannot find a problem, he or she will likely refer you to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). The RE will do a thorough work-up. If the RE cannot find a cause for your infertility, she may recommend various medications or procedures such as IVF.

While this approach certainly works for many women, the RE may miss vital mechanical components between different structures due to their specialist viewpoint. For example, if adhesions cause the pituitary gland to be constricted, they may impair hormonal function and prevent fertility. Our therapists have also treated some women who were in severe car crashes and subsequently experienced unexplained infertility. Although these women didn’t correlate the car accident with their infertility, their therapists noticed severe adhesions that likely formed after the car accident and impaired their fertility (see Could Your Unexplained Infertility Be Due to an Accident or Surgery in Childhood?)

Unfortunately, specialists sometimes miss these connections. At Clear Passage Therapies, we believe a holistic viewpoint is the best way for us to address the causes of unexplained conditions like female infertility, chronic pain, and sexual dysfunction. Regardless of what condition brings you to CPT for treatment, our therapists thoroughly examine the entire body for restrictions, imbalances, and adhesions. They then work to resolve anything abnormal they find. It is this approach that has led CPT to help over 250 women conceive and led hundreds of others out of chronic pain and dysfunction.
To learn more about our treatment philosophy, please visit our treatment philosophy page or read Playing An Active Role In Your Health Care Team. To read more about our treatment for unexplained conditions, you can also see Providing Hope for Women with Unexplained Infertility or our chronic pain page.

“The mystery of unexplained infertility is truly no mystery. There is always a cause; discovering the cause is the challenge.” – Miracle Moms, Better Sex, Less Pain

The new book, Miracle Moms, Better Sex, Less Pain, seeks to demystify health conditions considered “unexplained” or “untreatable.” Authors Belinda and Larry Wurn devote an entire chapter of the book to unexplained infertility. They believe that when no known cause for infertility can be found, adhesions are the likely culprit.

Adhesions are composed of tiny strands of collagen. If the body is injured, collagen rushes to the area to help contain and repair the site. As the strands of collagen continue to build, they form adhesions. While helpful, these adhesions can also attach to neighboring structures, constrict organs and structures, and impair proper function in many ways.

Adhesions in the pelvic cavity

Adhesions can form after a variety of common life events – so common that many women would never consider them as a probable cause for their infertility. Common events include bladder infections, yeast infections, inflammation of any kind, car accidents, falls, surgery, etc. When these events occur in or near the reproductive tract, pelvis, or abdomen, adhesions can constrict the area and prevent proper function. The sensitive structures of the reproductive system can easily become restrained, pulled, or adhered – leading to infertility.

The Wurns and other Clear Passage Therapies (CPT) therapists treat unexplained infertility by addressing adhesions. When a woman attends CPT for treatment of unexplained infertility, the therapists design an individualized treatment plan based on the patient’s medical history and a thorough physical evaluation. During the evaluation, therapists examine the patient’s body for signs of adhesion formation, including areas of pain, tension, immobility, imbalance, and malfunction.

Once the therapists have identified areas of adhesion formation, they use manual physical therapy techniques (collectively known as the Wurn Technique ®) to detach, deform, and disfigure these adhesions. The Wurn Technique ® enables proper mobility and function to be restored, thus decreasing pain, increasing function, and improving fertility.

In Miracle Moms, Better Sex, Less Pain, over nine women with unexplained infertility share their journeys through infertility and how they eventually became pregnant with manual physical therapy. To learn more about manual physical therapy and fertility, please visit our female infertility or unexplained infertility pages.

Blog Post By: Jackie

By Jackie

Unexplained female infertility can be an extremely frustrating diagnosis. As one patient told us, “At least when you know a cause, you can find an answer, or have something to battle against.”

When women come to our clinic with unexplained infertility, we dive into their medical and personal history. Women are often surprised when we ask about accidents in their childhood, such as falls. These events are pertinent because they can have a lasting impact on the body. When your body is injured, collagen rushes to the area to contain and repair the site. Collagen continues to build to help the area heal and eventually forms adhesions. Over time, the body will appear healed on the outside, but the adhesions will remain on the inside, often restricting and adhering previously mobile structures. A confounding problem for doctors is that adhesions do not show-up on diagnostic tests, unless extremely large.

At CPT, we sink our hands into the patient’s skin and palpate all organs and structures to feel if they are adhered or immobile. We then gently deform, detach, and break-apart the adhesions to restore mobility and function.

One of our former patients, Roxanne, underwent an appendectomy at age 10. Her doctor warned that the procedure could cause some internal scarring that could interfere with pregnancy. At age 30, Roxanne experienced difficulty conceiving. When she came to us for treatment, we focused on reducing adhesions in her reproductive tract and near the site of her surgery. Three months after treatment, she became pregnant naturally. She delivered a healthy baby girl and later had a second child.

Find out more about how adhesions impact fertility at our website.