In Conversation With Dr. Andrea Orvieto
L.Ac., DACM and Fellow ABORM, on acupuncture for fertility and women's health, and on why she would rather work alongside your other clinicians than instead of them.
What this conversation covers.
Everything below is Dr. Orvieto describing her own work, in her own words. Acupuncture is not a service Wellsprings Health provides.
Dr. Orvieto uses a traffic analogy. Think of the body as a network of highways and streets, she says, and of a blockage as a jam that affects everything downstream. In her framing the needles are there to clear the jam so the system can run again. The body heals itself when nothing is stuck.
She is direct about this: the patient is the center of care, and one modality is rarely the whole plan. She collaborates with OB-GYNs, fertility specialists and chiropractors, and although she can order blood work herself, she would rather it sit with the practitioners already monitoring you.
She draws this line herself. Physical therapy can do internal pelvic work, which she cannot. What acupuncture can reach, she says, are the muscles connecting into the pelvic floor, the abdomen, low back, glutes and thighs. She learned that anatomy from a colleague who is both a physical therapist and an acupuncturist.
She describes a communication gap in large fertility clinics, where patients leave an appointment without understanding what was said. A good part of her work is helping people follow their own treatment plan and work out what to ask next time.
Dr. Orvieto talks through acupressure points she gives patients: the wrist point used in motion sickness bands for nausea, Heart 7 near the wrist for stress, Du 20 at the top of the head for calm, and the point between thumb and index finger for headaches. She favours warming food over raw.
Who Dr. Orvieto is, and where to find her.
Dr. Andrea Orvieto is a licensed acupuncturist with a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine and a fellowship from the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine. She started in chemistry and planned on research. A cousin pointed her toward a school in San Diego and six months later she had moved. She was warned off fertility work as too much pressure, took her first fertility patient anyway, and never went back.
She has practised in Hollywood and Hallandale for close to ten years, at 400 S Dixie Hwy Suite 6, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009. This is a referral, not a promise about any result. Watch the full conversation on the clinic's YouTube channel. What we do at Wellsprings:
Three things worth taking from it.
Write the question down
Dr. Orvieto's point about fertility clinics travels well beyond fertility. If you walked out of an appointment without understanding what was said, that is not your failing. Write the question down and bring it to whoever on your care team has time to answer it.
Nobody on a team does everything
She is unusually clear about what her hands cannot reach, and she says so out loud. That is a good standard to hold every provider to, us included. If someone tells you one method covers all of it, that is worth a second thought.
The pelvic floor part is ours
Pain with sex, leaking, tailbone pain, a heaviness that will not settle: that is the work we do here, one on one, in a private room. Florida is a direct access state, so no physician referral is needed.
The patient is the center of care, and no single modality is enough.
What we actually treat here.
Urinary Urgency
The signal that arrives with no warning and no patience. Urgency is a coordination problem more often than a capacity one.
Coccydynia
Tailbone pain that makes a desk chair or a long drive something you plan around.
TMJ and TMD
Jaw pain and clenching you only notice at 2am. Jaw and pelvic floor hold tension as a pair.