A sheet of paper taped to an unremarkable door along a bustling stretch of Clement Street is the only clue visitors have that they've arrived at the Wu Healing Center of San Francisco.

Up a narrow flight of stairs, women in their 30s and 40s sit in the tiny foyer. There is an unmistakable smell of burning herbs. Dozens of pictures of babies and children decorate one wall.

The women - some from as far away as Phoenix - are here because they've heard that Angela Wu, a doctor of Chinese medicine, can help them conceive a child. A few are already pregnant and have come for prenatal care to stay healthy and ward off miscarriages that plague many older moms.

This is the other end of the fertility spectrum, far removed from polished offices, expensive labs and $10,000-per-attempt treatments that are the hallmarks of conventional fertility clinics.

More and more women are turning to alternative treatments - either alone or in combination with high-tech medicine - to help them become pregnant. The trend is especially noticeable in the Bay Area.

Melanie Weil, director of the Northern California chapter of Resolve, a nonprofit group that helps people with infertility, said the organization didn't have a single non-Western doctor on its referral list in 1993. Now there are half a dozen.

Older women are particularly drawn to alternative treatments and practitioners because they are more likely to be struggling, said Carista Luminare-Rosen of Novato's Center for Creative Parenting and author of 'Parenting Begins Before Conception: A Guide to Preparing Body, Mind and Spirit - For You and Your Future Child."

Desperate for control

"Those who are really at the end of the road in terms of their biological clock, they are desperate, many of them, to find a way to take control of the process," Luminare-Rosen said.

Furthermore, science is now validating the notion that stress and state of mind can play a significant role in fertility. Even Harvard University now has a behavioral medicine program designed specifically for infertile couples.

"The reality is, in some cases it can really make a difference," Luminare-Rosen said. "There are so many variables involved in creating the mystery of human life. I tell my clients, `Pursue the plan that works for you and is in keeping with your values. Do the best you can, and then let go.' "

Luminare-Rosen refers many people to traditional healers and acupuncturists like Wu, whose practice has one of the strictest regimens for would-be moms.

Diet, relaxation tips

At the Wu Healing Center, patients' tongues are examined to figure out whether they are running "cold" or "hot," and whether their blood is "stagnating." Wu prescribes an exacting diet, often telling women to stay away from cold and raw foods, wheat and sugar. There are herbs to take, and herbs to burn near certain areas of the body.

There are also acupuncture treatments, usually once or twice a week, to help restore the flow of energy - or qi - that, according to Chinese medical principles, is needed to help prepare the patient for pregnancy.

It all seemed a bit odd at first to Carol, 42, a San Francisco lawyer and later a dot-commer who didn't want her last name used. But after doctors gave her almost no chance of conceiving with her own eggs, she was ready to try it. Seven months months later, she became pregnant and is due at the end of the year.

Carol said she doesn't pretend to understand how Chinese medicine works, but she's convinced it does.

"I did everything she (Wu) said, and now I'm pregnant," Carol said.

Wu's clients run the gamut from those who don't want (or can't afford) to get involved in the Western, high-tech approach, to those who have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on such treatments, only to experience failure.

Many women, like Carol, also choose to augment their attempts at in vitro fertilization with Wu's prescriptions, hoping to give themselves every possible edge in the high-stakes process.

Although there are few studies in the West on acupuncture and fertility, two that have been published found a positive effect.

Some wait longer

The majority of WU's clients are women over 40, Wu said. And while she practices traditional Chinese medicine, most of Wu's clients are, like Carol, white.

Wu says that's because white women are more likely to wait until they are older to try to have children, when their need for assistance becomes much greater.

Diane, who also didn't want her last named used, came to Wu in 1998 at age 45. The Marin County woman had a daughter who died at the age of 16 months in 1993. For the next five years, she said, she and her husband spent more than $50,000 and suffered seven miscarriages trying to conceive another child.

"I tried all the high-tech routes. We tried everything," said Diane, now 48. "I came to her in desperation."

Six months later, Diane was pregnant with her daughter, now a year and a half old. "I'm so thankful and so lucky every day to have this child," she said. "It's beyond words."

Diane acknowledged she knows little about Chinese medicine and how it works. But she believes it was Wu's help that brought her the child.

"I was able to achieve something here I couldn't achieve any other way," she said.

While Wu's prices don't rival those charged by fertility doctors, the treatments do add up. She charges $70 for each acupuncture session - often recommending two per week - as well as many herbs that cost $20 or more per bottle.

And Wu doesn't guarantee that women who see her will get pregnant. There have been many people whom she, too, hasn't been able to help.

"I'm aware of our limitations," she said. "The East's strength is the West's weakness, and the West's strength is the East's weakness."

------------------------------------------------------------------ ---Infertility info

"Choices and Challenges," an all-day symposium featuring dozens of panels on every aspect of infertility, will be held Saturday, June 9, at Holy Names College in Oakland. It costs $125 for singles and $230 for couples who are not already members of Resolve of Northern California, part of a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people who are struggling with infertility. Call (415) 788- 6772.

For more information on infertility resources, visit Resolve's Web site, www.resolvenc.org, which also includes information on support groups, workshops and adoption, or the American Society for Reproductive Medicine site at www.asrm.org.

The federal government now collects statistics on the success rates of fertility clinics around the country. To view the most recent report, from 1998, visit www.cdc.gov/

nccdphp/drh/art.htm.

- Ulysses Torassa

-----------------------------The odds against older women

-- Fewer eggs: Unlike sperm, which are made continuously in a man's testes, a woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever have - about 1 to 2 million. By the time she hits puberty, she will have already have lost most of those, leaving her with less than 400,000. Hundreds more are lost with each subsequent menstrual cycle.

---------------------- More miscarriages: It takes just one egg to make a baby, of course. But those that remain after 35 years usually show signs of wear and tear. Specifically, the machinery that helps the chromosomes (the strands of DNA that carry genetic information) separate properly apparently becomes fragile, making fertilization and normal development difficult.

The body is primed to reject embryos that aren't developing correctly, which is why the rate of miscarriages among women over 40 is 52 percent, versus 10 percent for women in their 20s.

---------------------- Down syndrome: Still, the body doesn't catch all of the embryos with chromosome abnormalities. Older women have a higher rate of Down syndrome births, (about 1 in 100 for women 40 and older), the result of having passed on an extra copy of chromosome 21 to her offspring.

---------------------- Other problems: Beside the precarious health of their eggs, older women are just as likely, if not more so, to suffer obstacles like fibroids, past infections and the confounding effects of her male partner's fertility issues, such as poor sperm quality.

　　From Healthy.net