Acupuncture Helps Depression in Both Pregnant and Post-Partum Women

Acupuncturists are frequently called upon to treat post-partum depression in our patients and the results are usually quite dramatically positive with clients rapidly experiencing mood improvement. Many studies have been published which corroborate our experiences with patients and you can read an overview of a few of them here. 

The researchers contrasted integrative complementary medicine with a conventional drug therapy approach to care. Both approaches achieved similar positive patient outcomes. However, the acupuncture plus psychological intervention regime caused no adverse effects whereas the medication regime of care caused several adverse effects.

Also, reported in EmpowerHER, a study of pregnant women found that acupuncture was very useful to stabilize and lift moods during gestation. Read about it here and the original article here.

Time Magazine covered some interesting research looking into the mechanism by which acupuncture treats anxiety, stress and depression. The scientists noted that,

Rats who got acupuncture showed fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression than stressed-out rats who didn't get treatment. [and that] Acupuncture may work by targeting the same pathways that stress travels along, according to a new study in rats from Georgetown University Medical Center and published in the journal Endocrinology.

“There was nothing in the literature about acupuncture for PTSD and chronic stress,” [the researcher said] says, so she decided to study it. To find out if acupuncture was affecting chronic stress, Eshkevari and a team of researchers looked at what happened in a key pathway in dealing with stress for both humans and rats: the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA). It’s the same pathway targeted by some anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants, Eshkevari says, and the HPA is involved in the production of the stress hormone cortisol.

Hot Flashes: Two New Studies Show Benefit of Acupuncture

{This is on top of scores of other studies which reveal the same thing}. Here is the reprint:

Two New Studies Show Acupuncture Relieves Hot Flashes

Women suffering from hot flashes associated with menopause may have another alternative to hormone replacement therapy, according to two new studies showing that treatment with acupuncture significantly reduces the severity and frequency of hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause.

I knew I didn't want to take hormone therapy, but hot flashes and night sweats were waking me up almost every night, and I was finding it really hard to function during the day.

Women suffering from hot flashes associated with menopause may have another alternative to hormone replacement therapy, according to two new studies showing that treatment with acupuncture significantly reduces the severity and frequency of hot flashes and other symptoms of menopause.

Leslie, a busy business woman, found her hot flashes and sleep deprivation debilitating until she finally tried acupuncture with Emilie Salomons (Dr. TCM, FABORM) at Acubalance Wellness Centre in Vancouver. She explains, "I knew I didn't want to take hormone therapy, but hot flashes and night sweats were waking me up almost every night, and I was finding it really hard to function during the day."

"After my treatment with acupuncture I started feeling better, and after a few weeks of acupuncture treatments and Chinese herbal therapy, I noticed major relief. The number of hot flashes decreased dramatically, and I was actually sleeping through the night!"

One study, conducted by the Ankara Training and Research Hospital in Ankara, Turkey, confirms Leslie's positive experience with acupuncture. It included 53 postmenopausal women. Twenty-seven of the women received traditional Chinese acupuncture for 20 minutes, twice a week for 10 weeks. The rest thought they were given acupuncture treatment, but the needles didn't actually penetrate their skin. The women who received real acupuncture showed significant drops in the severity of their hot flashes.

The result of another study, presented by the National Research Center in Alternative and Complementary Medicine, University of Tromsø, Norway, at the March 2011 Acupuncture Research Resource Centre Symposium in London, "... showed significant reduction in the severity and frequency of hot flushes in postmenopausal women undergoing a 12 week course of acupuncture."

Researchers are still trying to understand how this 2000-year-old treatment affects menopausal symptoms. According to Acubalance clinical director Lorne Brown (Dr. TCM, FABORM), "Studies have shown that acupuncture appears to bring hormones into balance and reduce anxiety through a process called homeostatic regulation: buffering hormonal disturbance and stimulating feel-good endorphins."

Dr. Jerilynn Prior, UBC professor of endocrinology, author and world expert on women's hormones, states: "This research supports a large body of anecdotal evidence that acupuncture can safely relieve hot flushes and night sweats--it may 'work' by decreasing the stress responses that we know make hot flushes worse."

For Leslie, acupuncture has allowed her to resume her life. "Not only am I getting relief from hot flashes and the overwhelming fatigue and exhaustion, but I'm so glad to have the option of a safe, effective treatment for my menopause symptoms that actually improves my overall health!"

Salomons explains that "At Acubalance we usually combine acupuncture with Chinese herbal therapy and lifestyle changes like diet and exercise for the best outcome."

Terje Alraek of the University of Tromsø says in a press statement: "After menopause, 10% - 20% of all women have nearly intolerable hot flushes. The promising results of the Acuflash study suggest that acupuncture can help."

Relieving menopausal symptoms is the latest use of the 2,000-year-old Chinese tradition--it's already being used to reduce symptoms related to infertility, arthritis, back, neck, knee and shoulder pain, and anxiety.

Wall Street Journal *Again* Publishes a Pro-Acupuncture Article

The famously conservative and mainstream newspaper website, The Wall Street Journal, has published another fairly extensive article on acupuncture. This time it tries to cover the complicated science of how acupuncture may work for various health issues. While the article is careful to cover it's bases and not outright endorse Chinese medicine it does present acupuncture in a very positive light.

From WSJ article

In the past, the Wall Street Journal has written articles on acupuncture and pregnancy related depression, available here; and an article on stress and acupuncture – which I wrote about here.

Acupuncture Effective for Traumatic Brain Injury

As reported in the Journal of Neurotrauma (and reported here), researchers at the University of Colorado have found acupuncture to be very useful for treating brain trauma. 

Image reposted from http://www.medindia.net/
“We found that the study subjects with mild traumatic brain injury who were treated with acupressure showed improved cognitive function, scoring significantly better on tests of working memory when compared to the TBI subjects in the placebo control group”, lead researcher Professor Theresa Hernandez said.

Florida Acupuncturist Works with Cancer Pain

From a Florida newspaper comes this story which highlights an acupuncturist who treats cancer patients for the pain and symptoms associated with their disease. This is something that we, as acupuncturists, help our clients cope with on a daily basis. Quite frequently, this is true for those patients who are either currently experiencing the prodigious use of drugs and radiation, or who have completed courses of treatment but who are still feeling pain, fatigue and other symptoms from their therapy. (the video from this story was no longer active as of this writing).