Beat IBS naturally with acupuncture

(NaturalNews) A recent study by the University of York Department of Health Studies in the UK showed positive results on IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) using acupuncture.

The study's report has the usual pandering that relegates anything "alternative as supportive to standard medicine." But there were some interesting results from the study.

The trial used 233 long-term IBS sufferers, average duration 13 years, whose symptom severity scores (SSS) were 100 or more. They were split into two treatment protocols. Half received standard medical care, and the other half standard care plus one weekly acupuncture session for 10 weeks. [1]

Those who received acupuncture showed greater reductions in their SSS scores, but more importantly, these improvements lasted through follow-up testing at three, six, nine, and 12 months after the treatments.

One question: Why did this report consider acupuncture a beneficial adjunct to standard treatments when the subjects had severe IBS for at least 13 years in a country that provides healthcare to all its citizens without out-of-pocket payments? Obviously, their "standard of care" didn't cut it.

That's not unusual for IBS victims everywhere who normally have to resort to coping with IBS by observing their diets to avoid triggering symptoms because mainstream medicine has little to offer. There are other acupuncture/IBS clinical studies available from source [2] below.

Observing someone's diet and handling stress with IBS is also recommended by Chinese doctors. But an American acupuncturist also claims strong results using acupuncture and Chinese herbs to harmonize liver and spleen chi for IBS sufferers. [3]

A simple summary explanation of acupuncture

It's difficult for most Westerners to understand Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It's especially difficult for trained Western practitioners to grasp the basics of this 5,000-year-old medical tradition. TCM and Ayurveda are based on similar paradigms that are completely different from Western medical constructs.

Even when TCM prescribes herbs, their diagnoses are made based on organ energy or chi functions, not biochemical or physical. Acupuncture is based on stimulating those chi energies to unblock them and channel their flows along well charted chi meridians.

Instead of lots of of blood tests, X-rays, and invasive biopsies, TCM practitioners are able to determine low, blocked, or excess chi and how it relates to your health by determining the quality of your pulse with their fingers.

Additionally, they take a long, hard look at your tongue and notice signs that are usually ignored while regarding your symptoms.

It's amazing how well they can read your symptoms from these procedures. They can even determine your health trend and consequences before western medicine's technology can. In other words, diagnosing at the subtle chi energy levels can identify a health problem before it becomes a full blown physical reality.

From that, an intervention of acupuncture treatments and herbs is prescribed. According to a Taiwanese acupuncturist in Los Angeles, that's one reason too many Chinese are turning to Western medicine. It takes several visits and weeks of herbs to realize a cure. But the results are actual improved health and often a cure.

The combined efforts of the Medical Mafia (AMA, FDA, Big Pharma) are effective at maintaining their toxic monopoly that creates more illness than it cures. And the insurance industry refuses to cover so called "alternative" health practices, even though they are all less costly.

Think about that. Irrational, or part of a planned collusion with Big Pharma and the AMA to maintain its medical monopoly? The quick fixes modern Chinese are seeking are temporary symptom relief at best. It's a con.

Patients feel some symptomatic relief and think they're cured while staying on a treadmill of sick care from the side effects of toxic pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, radiation from CT scans and X-Rays, and reactions from the toxic injections used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038270_IBS_acupuncture_natural_remedies.html#ixzz2laeg2ni1

Acupuncture Helps Knee Osteoarthritis

Acupuncture uses fine needles inserted at precise points on the body. It's been used for centuries in Chinese medicine to restore health for a variety of conditions. Traditional Chinese acupuncture is based on the theory that illness can result when the body's flow of energy (called "chi" or "qi") is blocked or imbalanced. The acupuncture needles are positioned to correct those problems. Western medical practitioners have become interested in acupuncture, especially for pain relief. However, they often view acupuncture differently from their peers in traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on its biochemical effects instead of energy flow. Since acupuncture has been noted for pain relief, University of Maryland researchers decided to test it on people with knee
osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, involves the breakdown of joint cartilage and affects an estimated 21 million people in the U.S., according to the American College of Rheumatology. The new study enrolled 570 people with knee osteoarthritis. They were studied by University of Maryland researchers including medicine professor Marc Hochberg, MD, PhD, who heads the rheumatology and clinical immunology division of the university's medical school in Baltimore, Md. The knee osteoarthritis patients were randomly assigned to receive either 23 sessions of traditional Chinese acupuncture, 23 treatments of sham acupuncture, or a 12-week knee osteoarthritis education course. In the sham acupuncture group, guide tubes were tapped at two points on the abdomen but no actual acupuncture was given. Osteoarthritis knee pain, function and stiffness were recorded. Participants receiving traditional Chinese acupuncture group fared best. At the end of the 26-week study, they had the greatest decrease in knee osteoarthritis pain and the biggest improvement in knee osteoarthritis function. No serious side effects were noted in any of the groups. Traditional Chinese acupuncture is "effective" at reducing knee osteoarthritis pain and improving function in people with knee osteoarthritis, say the researchers, who presented their findings in San Antonio at the American College of Rheumatology's annual scientific meeting.

(Reuters Health) - Women taking a Chinese herbal formula experienced less than half the number of menopausal hot flashes they had before the treatment, according to a new study from Hong Kong.

Among women taking an herbal mix called Er-xian decoction (EXD), the frequency of daily hot flashes dropped by 62 percent, compared to a 52-percent drop seen among women taking a placebo.

"It's a modest effect, but not a zero effect," said Katherine Newton, a researcher who has studied herbal menopause therapies at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.

Newton, who was not involved in the research, said she'd want to see more, long-term studies demonstrating that these herbs are safe before she would recommend them to women, but that the current study makes EXD look promising as an alternative menopause treatment.

Hormone replacement therapy is considered the most effective therapy for menopause-related symptoms, but potential health risks from hormones have women looking for alternatives, said Yao Tong, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and one of the authors of the new study.

Er-xian decoction (EXD) contains compounds extracted from the roots, stems or leaves of six Chinese herbs, processed into granules then packaged in sachets to be made into a tea.

Although previous studies have found that EXD can help reduce hot flashes, they were not high quality experiments, the researchers write in the medical journal Menopause: The Journal of The North American Menopause Society.

To get a more reliable assessment of how well EXD works, they asked 101 women in their 40s and 50s, who were at or near menopause and experiencing symptoms, to drink an herbal formula twice a day for 12 weeks.

Half of the women drank a 15 gram dose of EXD, while the other half drank a fake remedy that consisted of tea, caramel and an herbal compound called gardenin.

For two weeks prior to the treatment, the women logged their hot flashes.

Those in the EXD group reported an average of 5.8 hot flashes each day, and those in the other group experienced five daily.

After the treatment, the number of hot flashes dropped to 2.2 in the EXD group and 2.5 in the other group.

Three months after the treatment ended, hot flashes stayed put at 2.2 a day for women who had drank EXD, while they went up slightly to 2.9 a day for women who had drank the placebo.

"Menopausal flushing is notoriously responsive to fluctuations and placebo responses in clinical trials, yet they have rigorously demonstrated an improvement in favor of active treatment" with Er-xian decoction, said Dr. Alan Bensoussan, the director of the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at the University of Western Sydney, in an email to Reuters Health.

The severity of the hot flashes also declined to a greater degree in the EXD group, from a three out of four at the beginning of the study to a 1.6 at the end.

Among women who drank the fake remedy, hot flash severity went from three to 2.3 on a four-point scale.

The trend continued three months later, with hot flash severity returning to baseline for women who drank the placebo, but only rising slightly to a 2.1 for women who drank EXD.

"It's a small effect, but a measurable effect," said Newton, who was not part of the research.

The researchers did not compare EXD to other menopause treatments, so it's unclear how it would perform compared to them.

But Newton told Reuters Health that the results put EXD "in the ball park of other studies of non-hormonal therapies that aren't as effective as hormones but do show some promise."

Tong and her colleagues write in their report that traditional Chinese medicine views menopause symptoms as related to deficiencies in kidney yin and yang, which regulate the function of the body.

"The composition of EXD includes herbs for enhancing both kidney yin and kidney yang to treat menopausal symptoms," they write.

Tong also said in an email to Reuters Health that her earlier research has shown EXD increases hormonal and anti-oxidant functions in the body.

Er Xian preparations are available online, costing about $30 for 42, 2-gram packets.

The problem, Bensoussan pointed out, is that the chemical composition can change from batch to batch and from supplier to supplier.

Tong said a company has shown interest in developing the formulation she and her colleagues used in the study.

However, Bensoussan, who was not involved in the research, noted, "The researchers have not reported accurate chemical profiling (definition) of the formula based on key putative bioactives or selected chemical markers in the formula. This is important for its reproducibility and for long term use in the marketplace."

Study Demonstrates Benefit of Acupuncture for Easing Joint Pain Among Breast Cancer Patients Taking Aromatase Inhibitors

Acupuncture can decrease the joint pain side effects often reported by breast cancer patients taking aromatase inhibitors (AIs), according to results of a new randomized trial conducted by a research team from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Their findings were published online this month in the European Journal of Cancer.

Aromatase inhibitors are the most commonly used medications to prevent disease recurrence among post-menopausal women with early-stage, hormone receptor positive breast cancer. Despite their efficacy, the drugs cause arthralgia, or joint pain, in nearly half of the women taking them – the symptoms can be so severe that previous studies have shown that nearly half of women stop taking AIs too soon, potentially depriving themselves of the drugs’ lifesaving benefits. The new Penn study is the first to establish a clinical benefit associated with the use of electro-acupuncture to relieve these symptoms, which could potentially help keep more women on the drugs for as long as they’re recommended.

“We see patients every day in the clinic who report that they have benefited from acupuncture, but until now, we have not had the scientific evidence we need to support what we hear from these women,” said the study’s lead author, Jun Mao, MD, MSCE, an associate professor of Family Medicine and Community Health in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, who directs the Integrative Oncology program in the Abramson Cancer Center. “This study is not the final answer, but it does provide strong evidence that acupuncture can play a role in controlling pain for breast cancer patients with AI related arthralgia. We saw a significant reduction in pain levels in the acupuncture groups with only very mild, short-term adverse effects.”

The Penn study enrolled 67 women with a history of early breast cancer who were receiving an AI (Anastrozole, Letrozole or Exemestane), had reported having joint pain related to their treatment for at least three months and rated their pain at least a four on an 11-point scale. That rating is significant because patients with pain ratings of four or more are more likely to discontinue their AI treatment. The study participants were randomized into three groups: those receiving electro-acupuncture (EA), those receiving sham acupuncture (SA) and those in the wait-list control group (WLC). Women in the EA group received a total of 10 treatments over an eight week period. The SA group received the same number of treatments but the needles used were similar to stage daggers, with a needle that retracts without actually being inserted into the skin. The WLC group was told that they would receive 10 acupuncture treatments once the study ended. All patients received education on joint pain and the importance of physical activity, and all agreed to continue their AIs for the duration of the trial.

By the eighth week of the trial, the EA group experienced a 43 percent reduction in pain severity and 53 percent reduction in their reports of pain that interfered with their ability to conduct their normal activities, as compared to their baseline or beginning scores. The study used the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) that allows patients to measure their own pain and the extent to which it is interfering with their lives. Using a different scale, more patients in the EA group than the WLC group also reported their pain as “much improved” or “very much improved.”  The patient reported data were supported by physical assessments.

The SA group also showed a statistically significant decrease in their BPI severity score compared to the WLC control group. The benefits to both groups persisted at the follow up evaluation at Week 12. Mao noted, however, that the study size was too small to distinguish the benefits of actual EA treatment from that of the Sham group. Since sham acupuncture is not a true placebo – Mao notes that it is still an active intervention with a real sensory effect on the skin – additional studies will be necessary to detect the real differences between the two methods.

“We are very encouraged that this study achieved its primary goal of demonstrating that acupuncture can significantly reduce the severity of pain in women with arthralgia related to AI therapy,” said Dr. Mao. “We were also encouraged that the follow up data provide evidence that this benefit does not disappear after we discontinue the acupuncture. The magnitude of the effect we see in this study is stronger than what we have seen in the literature, such as psycho-educational approaches.”

The research team also hopes that the new evidence will help provide a basis for eventual insurance reimbursement for acupuncture services to manage their symptoms. As a next step, the Penn researchers plan to launch larger, more definitive studies with longer follow ups of six to 12 months.

“We are increasingly in a world that demands evidence to justify paying for treatments. It is critical to bring the same level of evidence to our studies that focus on quality of life as we do to other clinical outcomes,” Mao says. “This is particularly important in gaining insurance coverage for all of our patients who need these treatments. Right now, we don’t have that reimbursement system, which in effect blocks access to acupuncture for women who are unable to afford paying for the treatments out of pocket.” 

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (R21 AT004695 and K23 AT004112).

Acupuncture proves successful for pets when drugs and conventional therapy fall short

(NaturalNews) Just when some naysayers and "science-based skeptics" ease off debunking acupuncture, or at least concede acupuncture offers a placebo effect, along comes some back page publicity regarding veterinarian acupuncture.

Yes, people are getting acupuncture treatments for the pets, and some veterinarians have been trained to perform acupuncture. It not only works, it works when conventional approaches fail.

Some serious MD blowhards claim all benefits derived from acupuncture are from a placebo effect because they don't have a Western medical explanation for it's efficacy.

They don't attempt to understand Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) principles, which are very different than the molecular-biochemical Western point of view.

They would be hard-pressed to come up with the placebo effect explanation for animals. Maybe the dog knows his master is hauling him off to a vet to fix his lower back so he can walk properly.

And when that vet starts sticking needles into his back, the dog is thinking, "I know this is gonna fix me so I can walk better and run. I believe in this stuff, I've read about it."

Right, of course. It's that ole' placebo effect again. Those "science-based skeptics" will find a way to debunk anything outside their paradigm.

Anecdotal proof - yeah, proof

It's more convincing to see or read about actual case cures that are not curable or made worse by conventional treatments than all of Big Pharma's claims based on "scientific evidence."

An interesting story involves a veterinarian who was considering dropping out of acupuncture training after the first session of classes had ended. The whole acupuncture thing was too weird for him.

Upon arriving at his home, he discovered his pet Dachshund was paralyzed, and his clinical associate couldn't improve his condition. So the vet, William Martin, became desperate enough to call one of the acupuncture teachers.

"Over the telephone we did some hands-on diagnostics. He told me where and how to insert regular hypodermic needles in acupuncture points." Within four hours, the Dachshund was standing. Martin claims this was his first acupuncture miracle, and he continued with the course.

Marlene Cimmons, a science writer and former health policy writer for the Washington Post, shared her Labrador's urinary incontinence acupuncture cure in that paper's "Health and Science" section recently.

After medications for her 11-year-old Lab caused more harm then good, her vet suggested Marlene look into acupuncture. Marlene knew it worked for humans because it had worked for her. After a few treatments, her Lab no longer woke up in her doggie bed soaked with urine. She was cured.

There are several other anecdotal gems; too many to describe here, but many are in the sources below.

Some background on acupuncture for pets

Evidently, veterinarian acupuncture started as a branch of TCM during the Zhou dynasty (1122-770 BC). The focus was on farm animals and war horses. Veterinarian acupuncture emerged in the U.S. along with TCM for humans in the 1970s.

Despite being considered alternative or complimentary, the procedure for diagnosing exactly what meridian map and acupoints to use is very thorough. The vet may smell the animal's mouth or nose, perform some simple movement tests, and ask the pet's owner lots of questions.

TCM looks at the whole health picture to determine the underlying causes of symptoms instead of grabbing prescriptions dedicated to one size fits all with potential side effects.

When those small, thin needles are used on animals, they show no signs of discomfort, and it's okay if they move around the room. Unlike humans, dogs and cats aren't required to remain still for 20 minutes per session. You know they won't anyway
.