10:18 PM PST on Wednesday, February 25, 2004

By JEAN ENERSEN / KING 5 News

If you haven't struggled with it yourself, chances are you know someone who wants to become pregnant, but can't Infertility affects more than 6 million women and their partners across the country. Now, comes some surprising new results.

For years, Kaycee Mogel tried to get pregnant. Even fertility drugs didn't help. Then she went to a chiropractor.

"Within a couple months, I was pregnant,” she said. “We're really excited."

KING There could be a link to infertility because the nerves to the reproductive system run through the spine.

Kaycee credits her chiropractor and she may be right. New research shows a possible link between spinal adjustments and increased fertility in some women.

"It lets couples who have been infertile or couples who are planning on having a family, it offers them hope,” said Dr. Madeline Behrendt, a chiropractor who led a study that followed 15 women who struggled with infertility, some for more than a decade.

Then, for unrelated reasons, each went to the chiropractor and 14 became pregnant.

"The chiropractor identifies spinal distortions, which are called subluxations, and once they were detected and corrected, the fertility function improved," said Behrendt.

She said there's a link because the nerves to the reproductive system run through the spine.

“You want to make sure there's no distortions there," she advised.

She said that when the back is misaligned, the nerves misfire and cause a hormone imbalance, which can prevent pregnancy. But not everyone is convinced. Dr. Sandra Ann Carson, with the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, said the study is too small and may give women false hope.

"Until chiropractic care is compared to standard infertility treatment in a clinical trial, we don't really know what the side effects are to either treatments or the benefits of one versus the other," she said.

Behrendt admitted her study was small, but said results are promising. She urged all women having trouble getting pregnant to consider chiropractic.

"Get an evaluation,” she said. “See if there's a distortion in your nervous system. Because, again, for the people in this study, chiropractic is what made the difference between them having a family and not."

Behrendt is heading to Washington, D.C. this spring, trying to get funding for a larger, more comprehensive study.

Some women also seek chiropractic care during pregnancy to relieve the stress of the extra weight and the back problems that can come with it.