What are complementary therapies?

Complementary therapies include herbal medicine, nutrition, acupuncture, homeopathy, osteopathy, chiropractic, traditional Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, reflexology, and remedial therapy such as massage and kinesiology.

Such remedies should only be prescribed by an experienced qualified practitioner – preferably with an interest in women’s health and PCOS. Your general practitioner or specialist should be informed about all complementary therapies that you are taking.

Complementary therapies and PCOS

There have been a small number of studies performed on the effects of Chinese herbal medicine or herbal supplements such as chromium picolinate on reproductive symptoms (fertility, ovulation etc.) and insulin resistance in PCOS. In these studies, the complementary/alternative therapy has often not been compared directly to the effect of a standard treatment (lifestyle or medical), so it is difficult to say how effective these treatments are.

A small number of studies have compared the effect of complementary/alternative therapies to standard treatment, or to no treatment, to allow their effects to be assessed more accurately. One study concluded that acupuncture improved ovulation rate and reduced androgen excess. Chinese herbal medicines, however, did not improve the majority of fertility outcomes in women with PCOS.

As yet, these results are preliminary. Larger, controlled, clinical studies are needed before any comment is made on the usefulness of complementary therapies either in combination with or instead of current therapy.

Content updated 25 August 2011