An Acupuncture fertility treatment is thought to increase blood flow to the uterus, relax the cervix and inhibit “fight or flight” stress hormones that can make it tougher for an embryo to implant, said Eric Manheimer, a researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The analysis pools results from seven studies on 1,366 women in the United States, Germany, Australia and Denmark who are having in vitro fertilization, or IVF. It involves mixing sperm and eggs in a lab dish to create embryos that are placed in the womb.

Women were randomly assigned to receive IVF alone, IVF with acupuncture within a day of embryo transfer, or IVF plus sham acupuncture, in which needles were placed too shallowly or in spots not thought to matter.

The odds of conceiving went up about 65 percent for women given acupuncture.

About a dozen needles are placed in the ears, hands, feet, lower legs, abdomen and sometimes the lower back. The procedure costs $500 a month for treatments twice a week, and patients typically go for three months.

If it came down to it and you really wanted a baby would you allow yourself to be a pin cushion for 3 months?

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The products include a Medela-brand cooler for storing breast milk, a cooler sold with the First Years breast pump manufactured by RC2, a Playtex baby bottle cooler and a vinyl pacifier carrying case made by Skip Hop.

The Center for Environmental Health, the group that did the tests, purchased the products in January and tested them first with a hand-held metal detector and then at a laboratory. The products were found to have from 1,100 parts per million of lead to 5,500 parts per million of lead, the group says.

Because the lead is not accessible, the plastics and children’s products industries claim that lead in plastic is not a health concern.

U.S. law bans lead from paint used on toys and other children’s products, but there is no mandatory federal rule about lead inside other materials in children’s products.

American legislators are considering new laws about product safety, and one provision in the proposed law would put a limit on the total amount of lead that could be in children’s products, no matter the materials. If enacted, that limit might forbid lead in plastic at the levels found by the California group. The group contends that no level of lead is safe in children’s products.

Allen Blakey, a spokesman for the Vinyl Institute, a trade group based in Arlington, Virginia, said it was unclear how lead could have gotten in plastic children’s products. The vinyl industry in the United States stopped using lead in plastic years ago, he said, and instead uses tin, calcium, barium or zinc as a stabilizer to provide durability.

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