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

Perhaps more than any other kind of therapy, hypnotherapy is one in which the relationship between the client and the practitioner is of prime importance. It takes trust and a sense of comfort and confidence on the part of the client in the qualities and potentials of the hypnotherapist for the experience to be as fruitful as possible, so good therapists in this modality are like gold dust and best sought out on the back of trusted recommendation.

One such therapist is my friend and colleague Hazel Gale. Hazel’s a clinical hypnotherapist in north east London as well as the two times world kickboxing champion and the current ABA (amateur boxing association) champion. When it comes to sports hypnosis her work is second to none and built on her skills not only as a top athlete herself, but also in her capacity to develop similar skills in her clients. She also however works brilliantly with a wide range of other issues aside from sports performance, and is my recommendation for anybody looking for a clinical hypnotherapist in London.

You can read about the results Hazel achieves with her clients here, or for the main page of her website visit:

http://www.hazelgale.co.uk/

You can also reach her by telephone on 07870 180 548, or via her clinic’s facebook page here

Sean was kind, calming and very positive about the help that he could give me.  After 6 weeks I began to feel better with no symptoms to speak of, no pain, and a fabulous feeling of well being. I am certainly no longer depressed.  I am enjoying life again and have a very positive attitude.  I am now embarking on a maintenance programme with Sean along with an improved lifestyle of healthy eating and exercise so that I never drop back to rock bottom again.

I cannot thank Sean enough for his kindness, patience and the treatment he has given. I wish I had contacted him at a much earlier stage in my illness.  For anyone who is reading this testimonial with reservations about needles and the stigma of alternative therapy I can strongly recommend it.  The minor sensation of the needles is small compared to the massive benefits in well being I’ve received”.

Clair Evans, Berkhamsted

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.

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

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

In the study, a group of 156 patients with chronic lower back pain were assigned to have the 75-minute yoga classes over 12 weeks, while a control group of 157 just saw their GPs. Participants filled in a 24-point questionnaire on whether their condition prevented them from doing everyday tasks. Those who did the yoga scored on average 2.17 points lower than those who did not. Three and nine months later, their scores were still 1.48 and 1.57 points lower respectively.

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is the body in the UK which sets the guidelines on the recommendations for best treatment. Acupuncture for lower back pain is already recommended by NICE, and as a result I’m one of the acupuncturists working in conjunction with the NHS to deliver acupuncture to patients with chronic lower back pain through the Milton Keynes primary care trust pain clinic.

Yoga is something I frequently recommend to patients as an excellent practice for health, mental and physical well being, and physical flexibility, so it’s a great thing to see its benefits being more readily recognised through research.

The full story in The Guardian is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/31/yoga-lower-back-pain-treatments?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

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

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

It’s probably true that the majority of acupuncture clinics are populated by more women than men, and while there may be many socio psychological explanations for this, there appears to now be an increasing biological explanation too , and put simply it’s because women are in more pain, and possibly more biologically prone to it.

In this paper, Lundeberg et al refers to the fact that women are more likely to suffer from many painful syndromes such as fibromyalgia, temporomandibular dysfunction, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel syndrome. While folk wisdom often posits women have better pain tolerance levels than men due to the frequency of menstrual pain and childbirth, it seems research is proving that women have lower pain tolerance levels not higher. In the paper there are references as to how women frequently score lower than men in pain tolerance scores, and how this is also borne out in animal studies too which show female rats being more sensitive to noxious stimulation than their male counterparts. There is also the fascinating observation that due to the hormonal fluctuations of the menstrual cycle, many clinical trials for medications don’t use as many women as it’s simpler to study men. Trials using animals will also frequently use only male rats for the same reasons. The natural and startling conclusion of this is that many women may be using medicine’s that are actually not fully studied for their own gender. Some rather complex biological differences in what could account for the difference in pain processing between the sexes are discussed, and overall the paper is an interesting reminder that clinical trials have many individual variances to consider if their conclusions are to be reliable – Individuality being something clinical trials have great difficulty in being inclusive of. As I’ll comment frequently, it simply isn’t possible to study optimal, individualised acupuncture in the context of a randomised controlled trial, but understanding how we might get as close to it as possible, or at least perceiving the barriers to it  is a useful approach in understanding the virtues and limitations of how we gather information about acupuncture.

You can find Lundberg’s paper here:

http://thomaslundeberg.com/uploaded/dokument/publicerade_dokument/Lund%2008%20Is%20it%20all%20about%20sex.pdf