Acupuncture beats aspirin for chronic headaches
December 15, 2008
This article appeared on Reuters.
A review of studies involving nearly 4,000 patients with migraine, tension headache and other forms of chronic headache showed that that 62 percent of the acupuncture patients reported headache relief compared to 45 percent of people taking medications, the team at Duke University found.
“Acupuncture is becoming a favorable option for a variety of purposes, ranging from enhancing fertility to decreasing post-operative pain, because people experience significantly fewer side effects and it can be less expensive than other options,” Dr. Tong Joo Gan, who led the study, said in a statement.
To read the complete article, click here. For an explanation of headaches from a TCM perspective, click here. Next time you have a headache, try acupressure. Click here for point locations and pictures.
Acupuncture for hot flashes–Better than medication
December 10, 2008
A new study presented at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology’s annual meeting in Boston, suggested that acupuncture is as effective for treating hot flashes induced by chemotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer. The lead author of the study, Dr. Eleanor Walker, had this to say, “Acupuncture is equal to drug therapy in decreasing hot flashes.” She went on to say that in addition acupuncture has no side effects, unlike medications to reduce hot flashes which can cause dizziness, nausea and constipation.
Click here for the entire story at ABC news, as well as a brief video of a woman receiving acupuncture for her hot flashes.
Click here for a more detailed description of the results of Dr. Walker’s study.
Acupuncture may ease chronic headaches
September 5, 2008
Reuters August 26, 2008
Acupuncture may bring some added pain relief to people with chronic headaches, a new study suggests.
The study, the largest to date on using acupuncture to ease headaches, adds to a conflicting body of evidence: Some research has suggested that adding acupuncture to standard headache medication brings patients additional pain relief; other studies, however, have found that “sham” acupuncture — using blunted needles that do not pierce the skin — is as effective as the real thing.
Those latter studies call into question the true effectiveness of acupuncture.
For the current study, published in the journal Cephalalgia, German researchers followed more than 15,000 adults with chronic headaches; all had been suffering from either migraine or tension-type headaches at least twice a month for 1 year or more.
Of these patients, nearly 3,200 agreed to be randomly assigned to either have acupuncture added to their regular therapy or to stay with their usual care alone. The rest of the patients began on acupuncture treatment.
All of the acupuncture patients received up to 15 sessions over 3 months, and all study patients were reassessed after 6 months.
In the end, the study found, acupuncture patients reported greater pain improvements than those who stayed with their usual care only. At the outset, they reported an average of 8.4 headache days over 3 months; that dropped to 4.7 by the study’s end.
In the usual care only group, the average number of headache days remained virtually the same: 8.1 days initially, and 7.5 days at the end of the study.
“Acupuncture plus routine care in patients with headache was associated with marked clinical improvements compared with routine care alone,” write the researchers, led by Dr. Stefan N. Willich of Charite University Medical Center in Berlin.
To read more, click here.
Acupuncture for PCOS
September 5, 2008
Emaxhealth.com September 3, 2008
Getting pregnant with her first child was difficult, but when Rebecca Killmeyer of Charlottesville, Va. experienced a miscarriage during her second pregnancy, she wasn’t sure if she would ever have another baby. When she decided to enter a study testing the impact of acupuncture on women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) at the University of Virginia Health System, she came out with a miracle.
“To our great surprise we were blessed with a third pregnancy during the PCOS study,” said Killmeyer. “I’m absolutely certain the acupuncture treatments helped me ovulate regularly, which allowed me to becomepregnant.”
Lisa Pastore, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UVA Health System and principle researcher of the study, was hoping for results like this. Her goal has been to help women with PCOS have regular menstrual cycles. PCOS causes a hormonal imbalance, interfering with ovulation and ultimately, fertility. With several women in the study reporting pregnancies, Pastore believes that acupuncture could be an important alternative, non-drug therapy for women with this disorder.
To read more, click here.
Traditional acupuncture may ease migraines
August 11, 2008
Reuters Amy Norton April 11, 2008
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Acupuncture, as practiced in traditional Chinese medicine, may offer some relief from migraine pain, a new study suggests.
Italian researchers found that regular treatments with “true” acupuncture helped improve symptoms in 32 patients whose migraines had been resistant to standard preventive medication.
Moreover, the therapy worked better than two forms of “sham” acupuncture used for comparison, the researchers report in the medical journal Headache.
Past studies have yielded conflicting results as to whether acupuncture can aid in migraine treatment. Some research has suggested that sham acupuncture, using blunted needles that do not pierce the skin, is as likely to bring relief as is the real therapy — calling into question the actual biological effects of acupuncture.
However, a problem with this research is that studies have had inconsistent designs, and many have used acupuncture points that are “inappropriate” based on Chinese medicine, according to the authors of the new study.
Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi (”chee”), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi.
For the current study, Dr. Enrico Facco, of the University of Padua, and his colleagues looked at how traditionally performed acupuncture stood up against two sham forms for preventing migraines.They randomly assigned 160 migraine sufferers to one of four groupsin one, patients received twice-weekly sessions of acupuncture using traditional acupuncture points; a second group received sham acupuncture as it is usually performed in studies; a third group also underwent sham acupuncture, but with the blunted needles touching traditional acupuncture points; the fourth served as a control group, in which patients received no acupuncture or preventive medication.
The participants in all the groups were given medication to treat any migraine attacks.
Over six months, Facco’s team found, only the group receiving true, traditional acupuncture showed lasting improvement in migraine disability measured on a standardized scale, compared with the control group.
The “main novelty” of the study, Facco told Reuters Health, is that the therapy was based on traditional Chinese medicine, but studied using the modern, “Western” scientific method.
The results are promising, he said, but more studies are needed to confirm the benefits of traditional acupuncture for migraine. However, Facco added, since the therapy carries little risk of side effects, it could be worth a try for migraine sufferers who are not adequately helped by standard preventive treatment.
It’s not completely clear why acupuncture might ease migraine pain. In addition to the traditional theories on qi, modern research has suggested that acupuncture may work by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system.