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.

Study Demonstrates That Acupuncture Useful for Heart Problems

 

Acupuncture and Chinese herbology are frequently used together to treat various types of heart disease and dysfunction and many cardiac issues are treated here, at the Northside Holistic Center. Occasionally an interesting study or report will be published which illustrates the utility of this approach. Presented here are a smattering of those studies, added to as I come across them.

A recent Chinese study found that acupuncture was useful in preventing heart damage from a drug commonly used as an anti-nausea agent, droperidol. The research, which can be read about here, found that: 

[While] droperidol is used for the treatment of postoperative and chemotherapy related nausea and vomiting but may cause heart dysfunction. Researchers speculate that the cardioprotective mechanisms of electroacupuncture at PC6 and its success in preventing droperidol side effects may be due, in part, to acupuncture’s ability to regulate the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic tone. In the experiment, PC6 was administered as a pretreatment prior to the injection of droperidol. The researchers added, “Pretreatment of P6 EA (PC6 electroacupuncture) significantly reduced QTc prolongation induced by droperidol, and this property may be related to the up-regulation of Cx43 mRNA and protein, which may contribute to the transmural heterogeneity of repolarization and abbreviate the prolonged QT intervals in droperidol treated hearts.” This experiment demonstrates that acupuncture is an effective non-pharmaceutical approach to avoiding adverse events caused by medication therapy. 

Excerpted from an article about another study on cardiac function and acupuncture, which can be read here. 

New research from the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience shows that acupuncture controls the heart rate and increases the strength of cardiac autonomic function. This new research indicates that the use of specific acupuncture points may help to prevent heart attacks (myocardial infarctions) and arrhythmias.

Needling acupoint CV17 decreased the heart rate and increased the power of the high-frequency component of the HRV (heart rate variability), an index of the body’s ability to maintain control of the heart beat rate and rhythm through vagus nerve activity. The researchers conclude that CV17 “causes the modulation of cardiac autonomic function.”

HRV (heart rate variability) is the variance in time interval between heart beats. Reduced HRV is linked to mortality after myocardial infarction and a lowering of HRV is also linked to congestive heart failure, diabetic neuropathy, and low survival rates in premature babies. A reduction of HRV and its high-frequency component is common in patients with PTSD (post-traumatic stress syndrome) and for individuals with increased heart rates due to stress.

This new research shows that the application of acupuncture to CV17 increases the power of the high-frequency component of HRV and simultaneously is able to lower the heart rate. This research demonstrates that acupuncture at CV17 is able to activate the autonomic nervous system to control the heart rate by increasing vagal activity. Depressed HRV after MI, a heart attack, reflects a decrease in vagal activity and leads to cardiac electrical instability. Since acupuncture at CV17 increases the cardiac vagal component of HRV, it may be an important acupuncture point for patients recovering from MI.

We treat many patients for heart problems such as tachycardia, brachycardia, palpitations as well as those which are secondary to other issues such as panic attacks, PTSD, menopause, as well as other idiopathic causes. This research bears out our experience.

Chinese Medicine Could Double Chances of Conceiving.

Researchers in Australia have just published a study suggesting a dramatic increase in the likelihood of conception among infertile couples with a combination of acupuncture and herbal therapy. The article, which can be read here, goes on to say:

Couples with fertility problems are twice as likely to get pregnant using traditional Chinese medicine as western drugs, say researchers.

They found a two-fold improvement in pregnancy rates over just four months of treatment from practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

Fertility therapy is a large part of the work that is done at the Northside Holistic Center.

Tour de France Winner's Secret?

Acupuncture.

Vincenzo Nibali, in a Wall Street journal interview about what – beyond a grueling training regime – he did differently than his fellow competitors, cited daily acupuncture during as his secret. Acupuncture can be useful for an athlete for endurance enhancement, a more rapid recovery after an event, and to help heal the body from injury. You can read an article about Vincenzo's use of this ancient modality here.

Wall Street Journal 'Finds Science in Acupuncture'

The famously conservative and anti-alternative medicine Wall Street Journal has published what, for it, is an extremely positive article on acupuncture including a nice section which goes beyond the old chestnut that suggested that acupuncture's effects were due solely to nerve stimulation or endorphin release: 

Meanwhile, neuroimaging studies at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have shown that acupuncture affects a network of systems in the brain, including decreasing activity in the limbic system, the emotional part of the brain, and activating it in the parts of the brain that typically light up when the brain is at rest.

The most common uses are for chronic pain conditions like arthritis, lower back pain and headaches, as well as fatigue, anxiety and digestive problems, often when conventional medicine fails