Acupuncture & Hot Flashes in women with breast cancer.

hot flashes and acupuncture

Acupuncture and Hot Flashes

Here’s an interesting piece of new research about Hot Flashes in women with breast cancer that came out of Italy and was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology recently and reported in Reuters.  Click on the links to both articles are below.

Reuters reported the following in their article commenting on the journal HERE.

By the end of the treatments, hot flash scores – the frequency of hot flashes multiplied by their severity – were significantly lower among the women in the acupuncture group.

The enhanced self-care group’s average hot flash score was about 23 at the end of treatment, compared to about 11 in the acupuncture group. The difference would be noticeable, Razzini told Reuters Health in an email.

The difference in hot flash scores between the two groups remained significant three and six months after treatment, the researchers found.

Women who received acupuncture also experienced a better quality of life than those in the enhanced self-care group.

 

If you would like to read the actual Journal of Clinical Concolog, the link can be found HERE.  A summary of the Journal abstract is below.

Purpose: To determine the effectiveness of acupuncture for the management of hot flashes in women with breast cancer.

Results: Of the participants, 105 were randomly assigned to enhanced self-care and 85 to acupuncture plus enhanced self-care. Acupuncture plus enhanced self-care was associated with a significantly lower hot flash score than enhanced self-care at the end of treatment and at 3- and 6-month post-treatment follow-up visits. Acupuncture was also associated with fewer climacteric symptoms and higher quality of life in the vasomotor, physical, and psychosocial dimensions.

Conclusion Acupuncture in association with enhanced self-care is an effective integrative intervention for managing hot flashes and improving quality of life in women with breast cancer.

Singapore zoo heals animals with Chinese Medicine.

Acupuncture for Elephants!

Animals and Acupuncture?

Animals receiving acupuncture!
Animals receiving acupuncture!

Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine works, there is no doubt about that.  Often there is talk about the placebo effect, however, this really gets squashed when we talk about healing and animals.  Animals are not aware if the therapy that is being performed is good for them, bad for them or has any impact on their systems.  They are generally speaking known to be free from placebo effects.

This is great news for the Singapore Zoo who have been using Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine on their animals when Western Biomedicine has failed to achieve the results that they were after.

Around 200 animals, including giraffes, elephants, horses, pythons and sea lions, have successfully been treated with acupuncture and traditional herb-based Chinese medicine in the past decade, although Western medicine remains the first line of treatment in the zoo.

“The Western medicine did not always work, so we had to find other solutions,” Oh Soon Hock, a senior veterinarian at the zoo told Reuters on Friday.

Seeing an elephant getting acupuncture is quite an amazing phenomenon. We are seeing more uses for veterinarian acupuncture both at Zoo’s and specialised VETs treating our furry friends.  Dogs with spinal issues have benefited from acupuncture as well as cats and horses.  Horse acupuncture is becoming more popular as Horse owners recognise the benefits acupuncture offers.  When our pets have acupuncture needles inserted into their body they often calm down, relax and don’t move around much.  Animals will just sit there and enjoy the experience as a lot of people do too.  If you have an animal that requires Acupuncture there are often registered veterinarians in your city or town that can offer this service for your pets and loved ones.

 

To read more about this interesting situation please visit:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/18/us-singapore-zoo-acupuncture-idUSSIN7787120070518