For the acupuncturist it's no surprise when a new study proves the effectiveness of this ancient technique; however, one more study under the AOM belt benefits the profession as a whole. For instance, new research, published by MedPage Today, reports chest pain improves with acupuncture.
The study, "Angina Episodes Decrease With Acupuncture: Chest pain frequency significantly reduced in patients with stable angina; improvement in depression and anxiety too" was conducted at five centers across China in 398 adult patients with chronic stable angina, who averaged 13.3 chest pain episodes over a 4-week baseline period, randomized in equal numbers to the four treatment arms.
To be included in the study patients had to have angina for more than 3 months, with attacks occurring at least twice weekly, and no significant change in the frequency, extent, nature, and inducing and alleviation factors of angina attacks at baseline.
Exclusion criteria included previous MI, severe heart failure, valvular heart disease, atrial fibrillation, poorly controlled blood pressure or blood glucose, severe arrhythmias, and more.
Dr. Susan Arnold, MD, of Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri told MedPage Today, "Angina is a complicated symptom that can be impacted by many things other than just pure myocardial ischemia. For example, both depression and anxiety have been shown to be associated with increased anginal burden independent of the degree of ischemia. As such, it isn't completely crazy to think that some treatment, that is not directly associated with increased myocardial blood flow, might be associated with less angina."
For more information about this research, or to view the complete study please click here.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
| Digital Exclusive
One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
| Digital Exclusive