Acupuncture can improve chances of successful fertility treatment
Acupuncture can improve chances of successful fertility treatment
By Maxine Frith Social Affairs Correspondent
21 October 2004
Acupuncture can improve a woman's chances of successful fertility treatment, research shows. Patients on needle therapy during IVF had higher rates of pregnancy and lower rates of miscarriage, the conference of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia was told yesterday.
Doctors and scientists long sceptical about complementary therapies are increasingly convinced they can aid conventional medicine. Acupunct-ure and hypnosis are now available on the NHS.
Researchers from the Reproductive Medicine and Fertility Centre in Colorado Springs studied 114 women undergoing IVF. The transfer process can be uncomfortable and stressful, hampering the chances for a successful pregnancy.
Half of the women had acupuncture during the transfer, with needles in their ears and other areas; the other half had normal treatment without needles. Acupuncture is based on ancient Chinese theories about pressure points and how they affect health and well-being.
Only 36 per cent of the women on conventional treatment became pregnant, compared with 51 per cent of those who had acupuncture. Just 8 per cent of the acupuncture patients suffered a miscarriage, compared to 20 per cent of the other patients.
The therapy also reduced the risk of ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo develops in the fallopian tube rather than the womb. Live birth rates in the acupuncture women were 23 per cent higher for each IVF cycle.
Professor Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary med-icine at Exeter University said: "We are beginning to suspect acupuncture can have hormonal effects and it [could] influence fertility." He also said extra "tender, loving care" during treatment might have influenced results. He added: "These results deserve to be rigorously tested using placebo acupuncture to ensure the effect is real."
26 October 2004 08:00
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Ancient medicine for the masses
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Joshua Lawton
Mary Saunders, a licensed acupuncturist at the Community Acupuncture Clinic in Boulder, performs a treatment on a patient as fellow practitioner Jennifer McLemore prepares for her patient Sasha Jacobs in the background.
Ancient medicine for the masses
New clinic offers low-cost acupuncture
By Lisa Marshall, Camera Staff Writer
October 4, 2004
In India, it is offered in drop-in, open-air clinics, where dozens of people are treated at once for little, if any, cost.
In China, it's available everywhere from urban hospitals to rural health centers where anyone, regardless of income, can afford as many sessions as they need. But in the United States, says Boulder acupuncturist Mary Saunders, the 2,000-year-old Chinese medicinal art she practices has taken an unfortunate turn as it has grown in acceptance and popularity: It has largely become a remedy for the rich, out of reach for the people who need it most.
"It has always been the medicine of the people. That is the nature of this medicine," says Saunders. "It is we, in this culture, that have turned it into this elitist, alternative thing. It is becoming so expensive that only people with lots of money or really good insurance can afford it."
Saunders aims to buck that national trend with the opening last month of the new Community Acupuncture Clinic, a Boulder facility that offers group acupuncture at a sharply reduced price. The clinic, nestled in the quiet basement of a restored Victorian house, features four cozy recliners, three massage tables and one straight-back chair in a peaceful space where as many as eight patients can be treated at once. As many as three licensed acupuncturists will be at the clinic at any given time.
Fees are based on a sliding scale — $30 to $60 for an initial visit and $15 to $45 for a follow-up. Private practitioners in the area charge anywhere from $55 to $85.
The clinic is modeled after a first-of-its-kind facility, Window of the Sky, which opened in Portland, Ore., two years ago with the aim of making regular acupuncture treatments available to low-income patients. That clinic now treats as many as 100 patients per week and has the capacity to see 15 at a time.
Window of the Sky founder Lisa Rohleder says she still makes a good living. "If you treat four people in an hour for $15, you still get $60, and they all get to come in," she says. "It's just not rewarding for me to get paid $85 a treatment but not be able to treat my neighbors."
After one visit to the Portland clinic, Saunders, a 20-year veteran of the trade and former director of the Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder, spearheaded a community effort to get a clinic started here. She says almost every piece of furniture in the place was donated, and she was given a break on rent by Partners in Health, the complementary medicine practice that leased her the space.
She hopes to attract students and people of various economic and ethnic backgrounds who have yet to try acupuncture because of its cost. Saunders speaks fluent Spanish and has printed her fliers and delivered her answering machine message in both languages. She'd also like to see those who already get acupuncture but have a need for more frequent treatments able to get them.
"This is the way they do it in China. You want to make it so people can come often. Then they can get real results," she says. "It is not like you are getting lesser care because you are getting group treatment."
On a recent afternoon at the clinic, the quiet sounds of Native American flute echoed through the clinic as the smell of lavender essential oils and burning Moxa, a Chinese herb, wafted through the clinic.
At the massage table in one corner, Saunders gently removed a hair-thin, stainless steel acupuncture needle from the forehead of Veronique, a middle-aged woman who came to the clinic for help with chronic fatigue. Meanwhile, two other women and one man kicked back, eyes closed, acupuncture needles firmly in place, blankets covering them, in the lazy chairs across the room.
Meanwhile, Virginia Charnow, a 26-year-old who came to the clinic for help with hormonal problems, was making her next appointment.
"I felt like I got the same care here as what I received one-on-one at a private facility," said Charnow, who is unemployed right now. "For this cost, this is definitely doable."
Rohleder, of the Portland clinic, says she is thrilled to see another clinic following her lead, and she hopes to see the idea catch on nationally and filter into other forms of alternative medicine. Better access to such medicine, she believes, could translate to better preventive care and fewer costly visits to emergency rooms for the uninsured.
"Alternative medicine, the way it is taught, practiced, and put out in the community is not accessible to working-class people," Rohleder says. "This is really how it was meant to be. It is a radical social justice undertaking. We are trying to change the way medicine is being practiced in this country."
The Community Acupuncture Clinic will offer a free lecture on abdominal self-massage for women at 7 p.m. Oct. 12 at 2825 Marine St., Boulder. For more information on the clinic, call (303) 447-0443
Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera. All Rights Reserved.
Acupuncture Helps Treat Knee Pain
Acupuncture Helps Treat Knee
37 minutes ago
FRIDAY, Nov. 19 (HealthDayNews) -- Acupuncture, used as a complementary therapy to drugs, is a more effective treatment for knee osteoarthritis than medication alone, says a Spanish study in this week's issue of the British Medical Journal.
The study included 88 people with knee osteoarthritis who received either acupuncture and the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac or dummy acupuncture and the drug. The patients were treated for 12 weeks and their levels of stiffness, pain and physical function were measured by the researchers.
Patients in the acupuncture group had a greater reduction of pain and stiffness and improved functioning and quality of life compared to the patients in the placebo group.
The study authors said future research should include longer observation periods after treatment to evaluate the duration of improvement offered by the combination of acupuncture and drug therapy.
Knee osteoarthritis affects nearly 10 percent of people over age 55, the researchers said.
More information
The American Medical Association has more about knee osteoarthritis.
Acupuncture is more than a Placebo
Acupuncture 'more than a placebo'
Scientists say they have proof that acupuncture works in its own right.
Sceptics have said that any benefits gained from acupuncture are merely down to a person's expectation that the treatment will work.
But researchers at University College London and Southampton University say they have separated out this placebo effect.
Their findings, based on a series of experiments and brain scan results, are published in the journal NeuroImage.
Dummy treatment
The researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to see what was happening in the brains of people having acupuncture treatment for arthritis pain.
The great bulk of trials to date do not provide convincing evidence of pain relief over placebo [dummy pill]
Professor Henry McQuay, University of Oxford
Each of the 14 volunteers underwent each of three interventions in a random order.
In one intervention, patients were touched with blunt needles but were aware that the needle would not pierce the skin and that it did not have any therapeutic value.
Another intervention involved treatment with specially developed "trick" needles that give the impression that the skin was being penetrated even though the needles never actually pierced the skin.
The needles worked like stage daggers, with the tip disappearing into the body of the needle when pressure is applied. This was designed to make the patients believed that the treatment was real.
The third intervention was real acupuncture.
Brain activity
When the researchers analysed the patients' PET scan results they found marked differences between the three interventions.
Only the brain areas associated with the sensation of touch were activated when the volunteers were touched with the blunt needles.
During the trick needle treatment, an area of the brain associated with the production of natural opiates - substances that act in a non-specific way to relieve pain - were activated.
This same area was activated with the real acupuncture but, in addition, another region of the brain, the insular, was excited by the treatment.
This was a pathway known to be associated with acupuncture treatment and thought to be involved in pain modulation.
Sarah Williams of the British Acupuncture Council said: "This is very positive news for acupuncture and this latest research is an exciting illustration of what acupuncturists have known for a long time - that acupuncture works and its effectiveness goes beyond the placebo effect."
Professor Henry McQuay, professor of pain relief at the University of Oxford and member of the Bandolier group that looks at the evidence behind different medical treatments, said: "The great bulk of the randomised controlled trials to date do not provide convincing evidence of pain relief over placebo.
"Some people do report that acupuncture makes them feel better.
"But it is extremely difficult, technically, to study acupuncture and tease out the placebo effect."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/h...th/4493011.stm
Published: 2005/04/30 22:57:58 GMT
Fake acupuncture 'aids migraines'
Fake acupuncture 'aids migraines'
Fake acupuncture works just as well as the real thing in relieving migraines, scientists have found.
In a study of more than 300 patients, both genuine and sham acupuncture reduced the intensity of headache compared with no treatment at all.
But real acupuncture was no better than needles placed at non-acupuncture points on the body, the Journal of the American Medical Association reports.
It goes against recent research showing acupuncture works in its own right.
Placebo effect
It has long been debated whether acupuncture works in a unique way or whether any benefits gained are merely down to a person's expectation that the treatment will work.
The latter is called the placebo effect.
To investigate this, Dr Klaus Linde and colleagues randomly assigned 302 people with migraines to one of three groups.
One group received 12 sessions of genuine acupuncture over eight weeks.
Another group received 12 similar sessions of acupuncture, except the needles administered were not placed in parts of the body thought to relieve migraine pain, hence any benefit would likely be placebo rather than real, according to the researchers.
The third group received no treatment but were placed on a waiting list to see a migraine doctor.
Less pain
All of the patients kept diaries about their migraine symptoms.
While the patients on the waiting list continued to have headaches just as often, the ones who received acupuncture - sham or real - had fewer headaches.
The average number of days blighted by a headache went down from about five to two.
Something else could have been going on
Dr George Lewith of Southampton University
This may be due to "non-specific physiological effects of needling, to a powerful placebo effect or a combination of both", said the researchers.
But Dr George Lewith, who recently published work suggesting acupuncture has an effect above and beyond placebo, said although the present study was well conducted, it did not truly test the placebo effect.
"We do not know whether this sham acupuncture is active or not. To test for placebo effect you have to use an intervention that only raises a patient's expectations.
"The authors note themselves that something else could have been going on as well."
The British Acupuncture Council said that using pre-prescribed acupuncture points for all patients might have skewed the results.
"Acupuncture treatment is different for each person. The formulaic treatment part of the study would be inappropriate for some patients. This would reduce the apparent effectiveness in the acupuncture group."
The council said there was good evidence to suggest acupuncture was helpful for treating migraine.
Ann Turner of the Migraine Action Association said: "Acupuncture may be a good treatment option for migraine sufferers to explore."
More than one-in-10 people in the UK experience migraines, two-thirds of whom are women.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4508597.
Acupuncture helps victims of dry mouth
Acupuncture helps victims of dry mouth
United Press International
Thursday, June 16, 2005
BALTIMORE, Jun 16, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- People who suffer from dry mouth -- a chronic condition caused by malfunctioning salivary glands -- get long-term relief from acupuncture, U.S. researchers say.
Improperly functioning salivary glands cause xerostomia, or dry mouth, which can lead to painful sores, tooth decay, difficulty eating and other problems.
University of Maryland researchers said acupuncture combined with head and neck radiation therapy helped seven patients achieve long-term relief from dry mouth symptoms.
Researchers reported their findings in the Academy of Dentistry's journal General Dentistry.
Lead author Warren Morganstein of the university's Baltimore College of Dental Surgery said most treatments provide only short-term relief while acupuncture provided longer-term help.
After eight months, he said, the patients had increased saliva flow and greater ability to eat, speak and sleep.