Traditional Acupuncturist (BSc hons, LicAc, MBAcC, Dip Tui na)
07717 515 013
Archive for the ‘Acupuncture News’ Category
GP Dr Sarah Jarvis has been talking about acupuncture on BBC breakfast news and as acupuncture awareness week approaches (27th February – 4th March 2012) it’s useful for prospective patients to know that acupuncture is a treatment now recommended by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence for the treatment of non specific lower back pain and is enthusiastically endorsed by many in conventional medicine.
Speaking here both as a GP and evidently as an acupuncture patient herself, Dr Jarvis is one of many who can talk about acupuncture from experiencing the benefits directly.
The British Acupuncture Council are launching Acupuncture awareness week to dispel some of the myths surrounding acupuncture, introduce acupuncture to people that may not be aware of the benefits it can offer to their health, and to offer more information on a treatment which is becoming more and more and part of health care in the UK.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be linking to snippets of patients talking about their experiences of having acupuncture in conjunction with acupuncture awareness week as this is a useful way of helping prospective patients choose whether treatment may be appropriate for them.
You can read about some of the experiences of my own patients here:
http://www.seanheneghan.com/testimonials/
Or to read about acupuncture awareness week through The British Acupuncture Council click here:
http://www.introducingacupuncture.co.uk/index.php
CGRP (Calcitonin gene related peptide) is a vasodilating peptide which when released by a nerve ending increases blood flow into tissues. The physiologist and acupuncturist Thomas Lundeberg has demonstrated previously that the sensory stimulation of acupuncture increases the levels of CGRP in the saliva of patients with xerostomia (dry mouth) and could be one of the factors that contribute to the effect of acupuncture.
In this recent piece, Swedish researchers have been investigating the effect of acupuncture for hot flushes and postulate that the heat loss experienced by some patients may be once again mediated by release of CGRP which is also a sweat gland activator as well as a potent vasodilator. It’s also known that CGRP is influenced by the body’s opioid system which acupuncture has been shown to affect. The research could be a further useful step in piecing together the complex physiological cascade that follows acupuncture stimulation, and more evidence of the ongoing efforts to reconceptualise acupuncture’s effects in terms of modern scientific theory. More details of the study can be found here
Incidentally this week also saw further positive research looking at acupuncture for relieving the side effects of radiation induced dry mouth in patients with cancer.
Researchers in China have been investigating the potential of acupuncture in relieving xerostomia (dry mouth) induced by head and neck radiation in cancer patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Current standard care often offers little in relieving this simple but distressing symptom and this randomized controlled trial compared acupuncture with current treatment options.
The researchers note that xerostermia questionnaire scores for the acupuncture patients were statistically significantly lower than controls starting at 3 weeks through to 6 months. Regarding salivary flow, group differences emerged as early as 3 weeks and salivary flow rates were improved even at 6 months post treatment.
The researchers concluded acupuncture given concurrently with radiotherapy significantly reduced xerostomia and improved quality of life.
Full details of the research can be found here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22072272
Researchers in China have been investigating the effect of acupuncture to the sacral vertebrae on the bladder function of rats.The mechanism of how acupuncture, or peripheral nerve stimulation, may affect bladder function has been unclear. This study, using urethane-anesthetized rats, investigated the effects of acupuncture stimulation of the sacral vertebrae on bladder activity and bladder activity-related neurons in and around Barrington’s nucleus. In 95 of 147 trials (64.6%), acupuncture stimulation of the sacral vertebrae for 1min suppressed bladder contraction. Acupuncture-induced suppression of bladder contraction was blocked by intraperitoneal injection of bicuculline.
The researchers report that acupuncture stimulation strongly affected bladder activity-related neurons, including those which fired only prior to the start of contraction, those whose firing was maintained during contraction, and those whose firing was strongly suppressed during contraction. All Type E1 neurons and most Type E2 neurons decreased firing when bladder activity was suppressed by acupuncture stimulation.
The researchers concluded that these findings suggest that acupuncture stimulation of the sacral vertebrae suppresses bladder contraction and changes the firing properties of bladder activity-related neurons in and around Barrington’s nucleus, and that these changes are mediated by GABAergic systems.
Full details here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22001760
A systematic review and meta analysis of the effect of Tai Chi on Osteoarthritis has concluded the results as “encouraging, and suggest that t’ai chi may be effective in controlling pain and improving physical function in patients with OA in the knee”.
The caveat is as always that due to the low level of RCT’s and risk of bias the evidence is limited, but it seems that since Tai Chi may confer significant other health benefits it could be a worthwhile exploration for patients seeking relief from this painful condition.
The researchers searched eleven databases from their inception to July 2010. Randomised controlled trials testing t’ai chi against any type of controls with OA localised in any joints were considered in the review. The meta-analysis suggested that t’ai chi has favourable effects on pain, physical function and joint stiffness.
Full details:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22021734
A group of researchers at the Institute of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine at Tongji Hospital in China have conducted a trial to investigate whether obtaining de qi (the dull heavy feeling of adequate nerve stimulation) is a necessary component of the treatment effect in a group of patients receiving acupuncture for period pain.
The patients were randomly assigned to a group of acupuncture with manual manipulation and an acupuncture group without manipulation. Pain intensity and pain duration were used as measures for evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of the acupuncture treatment. De-qi, the sensations a patient experienced during the acupuncture treatment, was scored on a 4-point scale by the subjects. In addition, the psychological factors, including belief in acupuncture, the level of nervousness, anxiety, and depression, were quantitatively assessed.
Complete data were obtained from 120 patients, 60 patients in each group. There were statistically significant differences in pain intensity and pain duration between the two groups. The number of De-qi acupoints and the average intensity of De-qi were significantly higher in the manipulation group as compared with their non-manipulation counterparts. The correlation coefficients between De-qi and therapeutic efficacy of acupuncture were greater than those between psychological factors and therapeutic efficacy.
The researchers concluded that compared with the psychological factors, De-qi contributed more to the pain-relieving effect of acupuncture for period pain. Moreover, manual manipulation is a prerequisite for eliciting and enhancing the De-qi sensations, and De-qi is critical for achieving therapeutic effects.
Full report here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21994026
An interesting study has just been published through the Department of Economics at Tilburg University in The Netherlands about the cost effectiveness of complementary approaches to healthcare and the impact of their use on mortality rates.
Data was collected from the years 2006–2009 and 1913 conventional GP’s were compared with data from 79 GP’s using complementary approaches in addition to conventional healthcare. According to the researchers, patients whose GP had additional CAM training have 0-30% lower healthcare costs and mortality rates, depending on age groups and type of complementary medicine used. The lower costs resulted from fewer hospital stays and fewer prescription drugs.
As my previous blog entries have stated, I highlight complementary approaches as being just that – complementary and secondary rather than a primary means of dealing with healthcare, and so studies like this provide interesting reading in highlighting the potential inherent in using a number of different ideological approaches to dealing with patient care.
Full details here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695547
In the August 2011 edition of Acupuncture in Medicine, the British Medical Journals’s title devoted to western medical acupuncture, a study carried out in Korea has demonstrated the differing effects of acupuncture on patients in different states of health.
Previous research has demonstrated that the effect of acupuncture is different in healthy volunteers than in patients who are symptomatic. In a study carried out at the department of Oriental Internal Medicine at Daejeon Hospital, researchers have demonstrated that although there is no difference between sham acupuncture and true acupuncture in healthy volunteers, when patients gastrointestinal function is impeded by administration of loperamide, true acupuncture has significant benefits of over sham on affecting intestinal function. The study provides further support to the idea that acupuncture stimulates homeostatic mechanisms via the autonomic nervous system. Among other things the study demonstrates the importance of understanding that the health of patients in acupuncture trials determines the results of the effects generated, and should always be a consideration in attempting to determine the effects of acupuncture in the setting of a clinical trial.
Cochrane Reviews have a reputation for high standards of rigour and transparency. This overview was conducted to evaluate and summarize the Cochrane Reviews of acupuncture for the treatment of any type of pain.
Eight Cochrane reviews were included and all were of a high methodological quality spanning a variety of different pain syndromes. Four reviews concluded that acupuncture is effective for migraines, neck disorders, tension-type headaches, and peripheral joint osteoarthritis; one review failed to demonstrate the effectiveness of acupuncture for rheumatoid arthritis; and three reviews were inconclusive for shoulder pain, lateral elbow pain, and low back pain.
The author’s conclusions were that the research suggests acupuncture is effective for some but not all types of pain.
Full details here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21359919
In 2009 NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) concluded that patients with non specific lower back pain and osteoarthritis of the knee should have access to a variety of different treatment options to help them better manage their condition. NICE have concluded that acupuncture should be one of these treatments on offer. As a result Sean Heneghan is now one of the acupuncturists providing this service through the Milton Keynes NHS primary care trust.
About 19 in 20 cases of acute onset lower back pain is considered ‘non-specific’, this means that the cause of the pain is unknown. Non specific lower back pain is considered chronic when it lasts for longer than six weeks, and in the UK lower back pain is thought to cost the NHS £480 million a year with the cost of lost productivity and sickness benefits being nearly £11 million. It’s therefore a very common problem and one in which patients are often limited in terms of their treatment options. For patients that suffer more seriously with this condition some of the medications commonly prescribed can become habit forming and cause unwanted side effects. Acupuncture is a safe treatment option that provides patients with a complementary method of managing their condition, and can help take the strain off the NHS in managing this complaint in the population at large.
Patients can be seen by Sean through the NHS only if they are referred directly from the Milton Keynes PCT pain clinic. Patients get referred to the pain clinic after initial consultations with their GP.
