Acupuncture is Effective for Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

A recent study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Integrative Medicine shows that acupuncture, in combination with standard therapy, provides more pain relief and better improvement in joint function than education control or placebo. Because acupuncture is effective and relatively safe, especially when compared with current therapies like Vioxx and other COX-2 inhibitors, acupuncture may have an important role in a multidisciplinary approach to managing pain due to osteoarthritis.

In the study completed by researchers at the University of Maryland, 570 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee were randomized into three groups- control, sham acupuncture, and true acupuncture. The control group received standard allopathic intervention and 6 two-hour group sessions based on the Arthritis Self-Management Program. The sham and true acupuncture groups received standard treatment and 26 weeks of gradually tapering acupuncture therapy. At the 8 week mark of the study, the true acupuncture group already showed significant increase in joint function over the education control group, and at 14 weeks they were significantly better than the sham acupuncture group in pain relief.

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease that causes pain and difficulty in walking. In standard allopathic medical therapy, no curative treatments exist. The focus of current medical treatment is palliative, using both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions in a multi-faceted pain management approach. While non-pharmacologic interventions include patient education, exercise, weight-loss, and social support, the pharmacologic interventions such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioid analgesics, and steroidal injections used to moderate pain are often ineffective and have dangerous side-effects. The most glaring being the increase in heart disease recently reported with the use of the popular COX-2 inhibitors Vioxx and Celebrex. Because of its relative safety, and its demonstrated effectiveness in managing pain and increasing function in osteoarthritis of the knee, acupuncture should be an integral component of the management of degenerative joint pain. This study demonstrates an important way in which Traditional Chinese Medicine can be integrated with current medical care.

Stress can kill you

Many people write off daily stresses as the price one pays for being an adult engaged in builing a successful life. But the fact is - stress can kill you. It often works slowly, eating away at your health little by little until suddenly something big happens - like a heart attack or stroke. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, stress and the resulting stagnation of qi and blood is the main cause of aging and ultimately death.

Often referred to as the "fight-or-flight" reaction, the stress response occurs automatically when you feel threatened. Even a perceived threat, such as your boss yelling at you to meet a deadline, can trigger the stress response. Once activated, the stress response causes your adrenal glands to release a flood of stress hormones into your bloodstream. These stress hormones —cortisol and adrenaline — in small doses can be beneficial to us. But when there is no release from stressful situations, your body cannot recover. A long-term activation of the stress response system can disrupt almost all your body's processes, increasing your risk of obesity, insomnia, digestive complaints, heart disease and depression.


Common Systemic Complaints Possibly Related to Stress
Stress is often felt first in the emotions. When you are "stressed out" you can feel frustrated, upset, as if even the slightest thing is enormously burdensome. But the fact is, stress can affect almost any system of the body and is most definitely not just "in your head." The effects of stress can be seen in the following systems of the body:

• Digestive system: Stress commonly causes stomachache, diarrhea, increased appetite and can cause weight gain.
• Immune system: Stress can lead to a suppression of the immune system and recurrent colds, or hyper-activation of the immune system and autoimmune diseases such as Lupus, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.
• Nervous system: Stress can cause persistent feelings of anxiety, helplessness and impending doom, depression, sleep disturbances, loss of sex drive and loss of appetite.
• Cardiovascular system: Stress can lead to increased heart rate, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and increased rates of heart attack and stroke.
• Other systems: Stress worsens many skin conditions — such as psoriasis, eczema, hives and acne — and can be a trigger for asthma attacks.

What Acupuncture Can Do for Stress-Related Disorders
The good news is that you can do something about stress. Apart from lifestyle changes aimed at making more time for hobies, meditation, or other enjoyable activities, acupuncture and can help reduce the adverse effects of stress and help you face stressful situations with more resilience by doing the following:

• Acupuncture can calm the sympathetic nervous system, which is stimulated during the stress response, thereby reducing heart rate, decreasing blood pressure, and increasing heart rate variability – all of which can help reduce the incidence of cardiac diseases.
• Acupuncture can also strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the “relaxation response,” resulting in a calmer mind, better sleep, and less agitation. A stronger parasympathetic nervous system can also help improve digestive disorders.
• Acupuncture can reduce the amount of inflammation in the body by increasing circulation to affected areas, regulating the amount of cortisol in the bloodstream, and affecting gene expression – all of which increase the rates of tissue regeneration and healing.

A single treatment with acupuncture can produce remarkable results, even for the most stressed individuals. People often feel much more relaxed and have an increased sense of well-being after the initial treatment. Usually, a longer course of treatment is necessary to address many of the functional disturbances in the body that are attributed to stress, however.