Health Traditions

Chinese Herbal Medicine Helps Reduce Menstrual Pain

2009-01-17T19:16:00.004-06:00

Chinese herbal medicine has been used in the treatment of gynecological conditions such as dysmenorrhea and endometriosis for over two thousand years. A Cochrane Database Review of 39 randomized controlled trials involving a total of 3475 women completed in 2008 by Zhu et al found "promising evidence for the use of Chinese herbal medicine in reducing menstrual pain in the treatment of primary dysmenorrhoea," confirming what herbalists have known for centuries. These results were compared to the use of conventional medicine such as NSAIDs and the oral contraceptive pill. While the traditional Chinese formulations worked better than conventional treatment, no significant adverse effects were identified with the use of the herbal medicine. Conventional treatments, on the other hand, often have very serious side-effects that have been well documented.

Acupuncture Is Better than Drugs for Migraine

2007-01-29T10:25:00.000-06:00

In the October, the medical journal Headache published the results of a randomized controlled multicenter trial comparing acupuncture treatment with the pharmaceutical metoprolol for the prevention of migraine headache. The trial extended over 24 weeks - in the first 12 weeks both treatments were given and then in the last 12 weeks follow-up observations were made. The results of the study suggest that acupuncture might be an effective and safe treatment option for patients unwilling or unable to use drug prophylaxis.

In the study one hundred fourteen migraine patients were randomized to treatment over 12 weeks either with acupuncture (8 to 15 sessions) or metoprolol (100 to 200 mg daily). Two of 59 patients randomized to acupuncture withdrew prematurely from the study compared to 18 of 55 randomized to metoprolol. Most of the patients that withdrew from the metoptrolol did so because of intolerable side-effects fo the drug.

The number of migraine days decreased by an average of 2.5 days (baseline average of 5.8 days) in the acupuncture group compared to 2.2 days (baseline average of 5.8 days) in the metoprolol group (P= .721). The proportion of responders (reduction of migraine attacks by ≥50%) was 61% for acupuncture and 49% for metoprolol. Both physicians and patients reported fewer adverse effects in the acupuncture group.

In conclusion, due to missing the recruitment target (480 patients) and the high drop-out in the metoprolol group the results must be interpreted with caution. Still, they suggest that acupuncture can be an effective an safe alternative to pharmaceutical prophylaxis.

Acupuncture is Effective for Treating Knee Osteoarthritis

2006-07-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

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

2006-07-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

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.