Acupuncture in the news

Migraine: Acupuncture vs Topiramate

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:43:37 +0000

Acupuncture is more effective in prevention of chronic migraine headaches and is 10 times safer compared to topiramate treatment. These are the findings of a study published in the current issue of Cephalalgia, a journal for International Headache Society. The researchers compared acupuncture with topiramate. They call for acupuncture to be considered a treatment option for chronic migraine patients, even for those patients with medication overuse.

Studies have shown that addressing tension in the neck, which often accompanies migraines and headaches can be very helpful reducing the severity and frequency of the headaches. I can see in my practice that combining acupuncture with gentle mobilisation of the neck muscles is the most effective way to manage acute migraine and to prevent migraines. It will be interesting to see more studies looking into the combination of these treatments in the future.

Acupuncture anesthesia for open heart surgery

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:05:57 +0000

The use of acupuncture anesthesia for open heart surgery was introduced in China four decades ago. Although the use of it has declined in recent years, there is a renewed interest in it in China due to the escalating medical costs associated with open heart surgery.

This study designed by scientists from China and USA (Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Shu Guang Hospital and George Washington University, Washington, USA) has sheded some new light on a combined approach of acupuncture plus local anaesthesia in patients undergoing open heart operation under cardiopulmonary bypass.

Compared with the general anesthesia patients, the acupuncture and local anaesthesia patients used less of narcotic drugs and shorter stay in intensive care unit. Surprisingly they also had less postoperative pulmonary infection. Using acupuncture to aid with open heart surgery reduced cost of the treatment significantly.

The results of the study were published in the current issue of International Journal of Cardiology.

Acupuncture for premenstrual syndrome, a new study

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:20:25 +0000

The current issue of BJOG, a leading publication in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, features a study on acupuncture and premenstrual syndrome. In attempt to evaluate current evidence, the researchers searched for high quality studies and included 10 of them in this review.

The results showed that acupuncture is superior to all controls. Four studies comparing the effects of acupuncture with different doses of progestin and anti-anxiety medications also supported the use of acupuncture. Acupuncture significantly improved symptoms when compared with sham acupuncture, ruling out the improvements were due to the placebo effect.

The researchers concluded that considering the potential of acupuncture, it needs to be further rigorously studied.

Why we procrastinate about long-term health goals

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Thu, 26 May 2011 02:53:08 +0000

This post is not directly about acupuncture, but needles are a part of the picture.

Dan Ariely is a behavioural economist and an author of a great book Predictably Irrational. In this video he explains reward substitution, one of strategies he used to overcome procrastination and achieve long-term health goals.

What is your strategy?

Acupuncture for infertility

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:33:59 +0000

Acupuncture stroke recovery story – 9000 needles

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 14:42:23 +0000

This doco is an amazing story on stroke recovery with help of acupuncture. It makes me nostalgic for China as most of the movie was filmed in one of the hospitals I have completed my acupuncture training.

No related posts.

Acupuncture helps hot flashes

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 07:51:38 +0000

ABC news have published a video on menopausal hot flashes and acupuncture. We had a number of positive studies recently on hot flashes and acupuncture. Among them hot flashes in experienced by breast cancer patients (a side effect of estrogen-antagonist treatment). Acupuncture has also been shown to be effective for hot flashes experienced by men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer (a side effect of LH-RH agonists and Antiandrogens). Ask me about the studies in the comments if interested.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 03:06:24 +0000

Short-term acupuncture treatment may result in long-term improvement in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome patients. That’s the conclusion of a study published in the November issue of the Journal of Pain.

The researchers have followed up patients with carpal tunnel syndrome after 7 and 13 months. The patients were divided into two groups. One group of patients had taken steroids for one month. Another group had one moth of acupuncture. The acupuncture group had a significantly better improvement throughout the 1-year follow-up period.

The findings are inline with research on Carpal Tunnel syndrome and acupuncture published in The Clinical journal of pain in 2009.

Reference: J Pain. 2010 Nov 24

Update: here another controlled trial on carpal tunnel syndrome and acupuncture published in J Med Assoc Thai 2010; 93 (12): 1463-9

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and acupressure

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:00:36 +0000

A dramatic improvement showed following acupressure for complex regional pain syndrome is reflected in these images below:

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: Three-phase bone scan: Before (A) and after (B) acupressure

This is not an x-ray, it is a bone scan. A radioactive substance injected into one of blood vessels shows an increased circulation to the joints in the affected area. And following a course of acupressure the bone scan looks almost normal!

The open boxes show the patient’s VAS scores over time for the 7 mo before therapy. The closed box shows the rapid and sustained improvement in the months following BMT treatment. The patient’s pill usage decreased as the pain resolved with BMT treatment.

Acupuncture should be even more effective way to manage this, however, most of the patients with CRPS find that they can not tolerate the needles in the affected area.

There are a few good ways around this:

According to acupuncture principles of treatment, we can treat the corresponding areas on a healthy limb on the other side. There was also some recent research supporting this theory.
We can use acupuncture points on the same meridian, but not on the affected area, which may also be more effective than acupressure.
Laser acupuncture is touchless!

Source: Anesth. Analg. February 1, 2007 104:453

At World Congress of Pain held in Montréal: Acupuncture for Pain (II)

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:24:36 +0000

At World Congress of Pain held in Montréal, Canada, Acupuncture was featured in numerous presentations. Acupuncture was also spotlighted in the plenary session.

Neuroscientist Ji-sheng Han, director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at Peking University and founder of the Chinese Association for the Study of Pain talked about his new studies and perspective on evaluating acupuncture vs placebo:

Just inserting needles under the skin does not work, at least not in rats which are impervious to sham treatments that can nonetheless get results (placebo) in humans.

People even said that acupuncture is nothing but placebo, that’s because just touching the skin with a needle can also produce an analgesic effect.

In rats, acupuncture needles simply left in place got no results. Manually twisted needles provided relief and electrical manipulation produced the best pain suppression. If the needles are not moved, there is no analgesic effect. If you manipulate continuously, (pain relief) goes up gradually. And when you pull the needles out the effect goes down. These are clearcut results.

So, on top of the psychological or placebo effect, you have a real analgesic effect.

These days, Chinese patients get about 30 minutes of pre-surgery acupuncture to increase the effect of “acupuncture analgesia” during an operation.

Other Han studies, replicated at the University of Texas, suggest that the right method of needle manipulation and electric frequency also play a key role. Clinicians need better training because acupuncture methods are critical when treating different kinds of pain, for example so as not to aggravate existing pain.

Below are some of the abstracts discussed at the congress:

At World Congress of Pain held in Montréal: Acupuncture for Pain

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 03:06:14 +0000

At World Congress of Pain held in Montréal, Canada, Acupuncture was featured in numerous presentations. I will cover the studies in more detail in another post, but there is a quick observation I would like to share here.

As far as physical therapies are concerned, acupuncture was a hand down winner in terms of number of studies presented at the congress: there were 14 abstracts on acupuncture presented, but only 4 for physiotherapy, 1 for osteopathy and none for chiropractic.

This illustrates how much interest and attention acupuncture is receiving from the scientists compared to other modalities.

Celebrities endorsing acupuncture for fertility

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 04:16:11 +0000

One of my fertility patients emailed me today that the number of celebs who endorse acupuncture for infertility is growing and I should have this on my blog.

In May Celine Dion announced she was pregnant with twins. The 42 year-old Canadian singer underwent 6 cycles of IVF. She credited acupuncture for the success in her last IVF cycle.

Last week a 41-year-old pop diva Mariah Carey announced that she was pregnant. And she has new mom Celine Dion to thank for her pregnancy – she tried acupuncture to help her conceive after hearing the Canadian superstar rave about the treatment.

Thanks to Andrea for sharing this and thanks to idf-fotos for the photo of Celine Dion.

Old eggs? Optimising ovarian reserve

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 02:50:16 +0000

Here you can find a great webinar on natural ways to optimise ovarian reserve including acupuncture and herbal medicine. The webinar is put together for general public by one of my colleagues in United States Dr. Brandon Horn, PhD, JD, LAc, FABORM.

It takes about an hour and 20 minutes.

Learn and take control!

No related posts.

Acupuncture under-prescribed in favour of drugs for neck pain

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:38:25 +0000

Researchers at Duke University and University of North Carolina observe that doctors are over-prescribing drugs for the treatment of chronic neck pain.

They found that more than 56 per cent of neck pain patients were using over-the-counter medications, while 29 per cent reported using strong narcotics and 23 per cent used weak narcotics.

Dr Adam Goode, who led the study, commented: “Rehabilitation conditioning and acupuncture studies have shown to be effective treatments that were less frequently used by patients with chronic neck pain.”

Published in November issue of Arthritis Care and Research, the study noted that some effective treatments were being overlooked in favour of other over-used options.

Depression during pregnancy and Acupuncture

Dr Vitalis Acupuncture — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 09:20:00 +0000

Acupuncture – effective and safe treatment for pregnancy depression

I’ve written on the subject of depression and acupuncture before. Now a new and largest study to date published in Obstetrics & Gynaecology confirms acupuncture to be effective for pregnancy depression. I sincerely hope, that for the benefit of the developing babies, acupuncture becomes a mainstream therapy for pregnancy depression.

Why antidepressants is such a bad idea during pregnancy?

Since 2008 NZ Medsafe has been warning that SSRI antidepressant use in pregnancy may increase the risk of congenital abnormalities, and that in later stages of pregnancy can lead to neonatal complications indicative of a withdrawal syndrome, and to persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn; and that doctors need to discuss this with their patients.
Some antidepressants were considered to be relatively safe not so long ago, but there is more and more evidence confirming that any kind of antidepressants may temporary or permanently harm the developing foetus. The March 2010 issue of Pediatrics reports that antidepressants may permanently or reversibly affect fetal brain development.

Why you shouldn’t delay and address pregnancy depression as soon as it is diagnosed

Many thousands of preterm births could be prevented if women with clinical depression receive treatment during pregnancy.
As a result of stress or depression increased cortisol levels may lead to babies, who are born small and possibly smaller brains in proportion to their bodies.
Babies born to mothers with depression have a blunted stress response, which may mean it is harder for them to react to stressful situations.
Stress experienced by a pregnant female can alter the structure of her offspring’s brain, particularly regions vital for emotional development [reference]
Pregnancy depression has a long-term effect on the child. Children born to stressed mothers have shown abnormally high cortisol levels at age 10.

The bottom line? Depression during pregnancy may harm the developing foetus and so can antidepressants. Acupuncture is safe and effective treatment for pregnancy depression. If you are pregnant and suspect that you may be suffering from depression, remember to discuss acupuncture with your obstetrician, midwife or GP and give me a ring!