Finding science in acupuncture

Finding science in acupuncture

Monday, May 09, 2016 by: PF Louis

(NaturalNews) This article title is taken from a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article by Belinda Beck, WSJ health writer. She turned in a good journalistic effort, undergoing treatments herself for chronic neck and back pain.

After two sessions, she felt better. Beck did her due journalistic diligence by interviewing various western physicians and scientists in the New York area who are familiar with acupuncture, some even practicing it.

But as Mike Adams says in a 2006 Natural News article explaining different medical modalities, the Western version of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which includes herbs as well as acupuncture, is not at the same level as the version practiced throughout Asia.

This has also been explained by more than one acupuncturist here in the United States. The length of time Asians can endure with needles and uncomfortable stimulation is a sensation that most Westerners can't handle. Nevertheless, results are still achieved with "acupuncture light" in the U.S.

Adams also points out how TCM has been around, more advanced than Western medicine in many aspects, for over 4,000 years. Yet, Western "science-based" medicine tends to discount TCM's energetic chi (qi) science because they must confirm and measure it with those expensive medical instruments. (http://www.naturalnews.com/019365_western_medicine_conventional.html)

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053946_acupuncture_scientific_evidence_alternative_medicine.html#ixzz48PKdmaP8

Emergency Room Patients are Choosing Acupuncture Instead of Painkillers at Minneapolis Hospital

Emergency Room Patients are Choosing Acupuncture Instead of Painkillers at Minneapolis Hospital

BethMcDonoughh

Overdoses from painkillers and heroin are just about as deadly as car crashes in Minnesota.

Last year, 336 deaths were linked to the use of opioids or heroin.  In contrast, 411 people died in crashes.  Fatal facts like that drove a Minneapolis hospital to find another way to tame the pain.

Abbott Northwestern is the first hospital in not only Minnesota, but the country, to offer acupuncture in the emergency room.

Chris Tanita of Minneapolis took advantage of that one day in April.

"I had the most intense pain on the side of my throat and neck," Tanita said.

Tanita couldn't swallow or sleep and couldn't take the pain anymore.  Anxious and afraid, she came to the emergency room at Abbott Northwestern for relief.

"I want pain medicine for the fever," she said.

She wanted something to numb her suffering.  What she got was an option from Acupuncturist Adam Reinstein.

"I talked to your doctor and he wants me to see if you want acupuncture to make you more comfortable," he said.

Instead of getting a pill, she got poked.  Reinstein inserted the tiny, thin needles in certain spots. Needles can be inserted in places such as the hands, arms and ears to stimulate nerves, muscles and tissues.

"I am triggering their bodies own natural healing ability to produce their own painkiller's endorphins, they may help release them," according to Reinstein.

Within 30 minutes, Tanita felt the flare-ups fade, her fever go down and her throat relax.

"I literally couldn't talk three and a half hours ago," she said.

At this hospital, in the heart of the city, emergency room doctors treat almost 50,000 patients a year according to Dr. Christopher Obetz.

"It's a place where people are first exposed to painkillers and a place where people who already have addictions will come to acquire additional pain medications," Obetz said.

Abbott Northwestern's research points out 49 percent of people who come to the ER either receive painkillers as part of their treatment or get a prescription for them when leaving.  A national study shows 15 percent of the patients who are naive to painkillers and exposed to them for the first time in the ER become addicted within six to nine months.

That led Abbott Northwestern to launch a first-of-its-kind study to determine whether acupuncture is effective when used in addition to, or instead of, painkillers.

Jeffery Dusek is the lead researcher at the hospital's Penny George Institute of Health & Healing.

"I think we're at the point where patients aren't so concerned about what's going to reduce the pain as long as something can reduce the pain and if acupuncture can do it, they're in for it," Dusek said.

Adam Reinstein checks the patient board, talks with doctors and makes the rounds, looking for someone seeking pain relief.  Since the study started in 2013, a majority, 89 percent of 850 patients have been willing to give acupuncture a shot.  In 2013, 99 did.  That number more than tripled in 2014 to 371, then scaled back to 245 in 2015.  Dusek noticed something important, "we're seeing less use of opioid's in the ER when they're receiving acupuncture."

Dusek says 20 percent less, saving the hospital a lot of money.  What's more, some patients leave the ER without a prescription at all. 

Yet, Dr. Stephen Barrett openly questions the value of acupuncture.

"The scientific consensus is acupuncture is not particularly effective for pain, it's not better than a placebom: Barrett said.

Barrett practiced medicine for 35 years and runs a number of consumer health websites, including Acuwatch.org, where he refers to acupuncture as needles with nonsense.

"Listen, I don't believe in ghosts either and that's the equivalent of a ghost in your body," he added.

Yet, folks at Abbott Northwestern believe the benefits are very real.  The idea is to stick it to pain by combining Eastern remedies along with Western medicine.  5 EYEWITNESS NEWS was there as Jack Weston, of Edina, was being released from the hospital.  He wanted us to know he's tried both, and prefers one over the other.

"I would stay with the medicine if push came to shove, because I think it's likely more effective in the long run," he said.

However, staff at Abbott Northwestern believe acupuncture in the ER could reduce not only throbbing aches, but the use of painkillers and the number of prescriptions doctor's write, benefiting folks inside the hospital and even more outside of it.

"I think it's more societal costs if we could avoid people being dependent on opioids and all the consequent increases of hospitalizations and readmissions after that, I think that's where the benefit is," Dusek said.

As for Tanita, she's just as afraid of addictive meds as she is the pain itself.

"At least for me and how I want to live, I prefer to not take pills, you know the less foreign weird stuff in my body the better," Tanita said.

Tanita says part of what she liked about the program was she got to choose whether she wanted to take part. 

Acupuncture in the ER can be a one-time fix, or it can become ongoing treatment.  When a patient leaves, they can get a referral to the Penny George Institute, it's an outpatient clinic, or folks can go to any of the 584 licensed acupuncturists in the state.

The pilot program lasts another year.  The hospital is applying for a federal grant to continue and expand the study. 

Source of the report is here.

Science suggests acupuncture works, but no one is sure why

Science suggests acupuncture works, but no one is sure why

By Katherine Ellen Foley

May 04, 2016

When the writer and artist Margarita Gokun Silver had her first migraine after she turned 40, the pain was so bad she vomited before lying in bed, completely incapacitated for the rest of the day.

Over-the-counter painkillers didn’t work. Her doctor, who assured her there was no underlying cause for her migraines, gave her expensive pain medication to try, but it left her with debilitating nausea. After trying a variety of other therapies—ranging from yoga to Canadian painkillers to Botox—she finally settled on acupuncture. It was the one thing that worked, she recently wrote in the Washington Post.

Acupuncture—the act of sticking tiny needles into different parts of the body to try to relieve pain elsewhere—is based on Chinese medicine from over 2000 years ago. In Chinese tradition, acupuncture helps realign the body’s qi (pronounced ‘chee’), which is the energy that flows through various parts of your bodies. It was assumed that when you were in discomfort, either as a result of pain or nausea, your body’s qi was misaligned; the tiny needles, sometimes augmented with heat or electricity, could help realign that energy, with the minor side effects of possibly a little on-site pain and light bleeding.

Although acupuncture was mostly abandoned between the 18th to 20th centuries, it was still practiced informally by Chinese traditionalists. It caught the attention of Westerners when, in 1971, the treatment was provided for a New York Times journalist in Peking, who later wrote (pdf) about the experience.

Now, there’s increasing evidence that acupuncture works. Last month, a meta-review of 12 clinical trials found that acupuncture is a moderately effective treatment for chronic tension headaches, presumably similar to the migraines Silver experienced.

But how does it help?

No one is really sure. In 2014, researchers at Rutgers found that when mice were given (pdf) acupuncture with electricity flowing through the needles, they produced less of an harmful inflammatory response; some scientists believe that the needles stimulate the production of healthy chemicals in our bodies.

“One major hypothesis is that acupuncture works through neurohormonal pathways,” Ting Bao, an integrative oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer, told Live Science. “Basically, you put the needle through specific points in the body and stimulate the nerve. The nerve actually sends signals to the brain, and the brain releases neural hormones such as beta-endorphins.” With these extra hormones, he explained, a patient may feel less pain than they did previously. He also postulated that the tiny needles promote nerve growth and regeneration to alleviate pain.

Much of the evidence has yet to be tested, and some scientists remain skeptical. “Acupuncture does not work, which means all discussions of how it does work are irrelevant,” David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist and neurologist at University College London, told Scientific American. Although there are claims that acupuncture can be effective treatment for depression, pain during cancer treatment, and other forms of chronic pain, the evidence is more limited—and possibly even biased, according to another systematic review.

For patients with chronic pain, acupuncture probably won’t hurt—if you can afford it. In the US, with 18,000 licensed acupuncturists (the majority of them are in California and New York), treatments cost about $125 each (though this may vary with insurance). Silver felt better after eight 30-minute treatments over the course of a month.

If anything, acupuncture can provide a chance for some peace and quiet. “I know that in addition to healing my body with needles, I also get a whole half-hour when I only think of good things,” Silver wrote.

The source of the article is here.

Sanford Doctor Uses Acupuncture for Pain Management

Sanford doc uses acupuncture for pain management as an alternative to meds

By BLAIR EMERSON Bismarck Tribune

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Gary Elhard has been experiencing lower-back pain for the past few years, mainly in the left side of his back — especially while walking.

Elhard, who works half-days at Bill Barth in Mandan, recently started an alternative medicine regimen offered by a physician at Sanford Health: acupuncture. He’s had three treatments and reports his back pain has subsided.

“I’d always thought I’d like to try it,” he said during his third treatment with Dr. Anthony Tello late last month.

Tello, an internal medicine specialist at Sanford, has been practicing acupuncture for 20 years at the hospital. The vast majority of his cases involve pain management, including chronic pain and migraines. He said the treatment is becoming more popular among patients seeking an alternative to taking medications.

Tello sees patients in an exam room on the hospital’s fourth floor. He said most are referred to him by word-of-mouth or by other doctors, and each week he sees three to five new or returning patients.

During a recent acupuncture session with Elhard, Tello asked him to rank his pain level.

“Right after my first treatment, I felt better,” Elhard said. After his second session, he felt a lot better. At his most recent appointment, he said his pain has gotten 60 percent better with the acupuncture treatments.

Acupuncture involves the insertion of very thin needles into various parts of the body. Some are inserted just a few millimeters below the skin. The needles are flexible and not hollow, making them less painful than those used for injections, according to Tello.

In addition to “dry needling,” Tello performs electroacupuncture. In this variation, a machine emits an electrical charge similar to transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation therapy, or TENS.

In preparation for this session, Tello marked several points on Elhard’s back, about 2 inches apart.

“It’s the same spot every time because we’re getting good results,” he said as he inserted medium-size needles about an inch into Elhard’s skin. He then plugged in an electroacupuncture machine and hooked tiny clips like jumper cables onto each needle.

“Let’s start on the left side. Tell me when you start to feel it,” said Tello, turning a knob on the machine until Elhard said he could feel the surge of electricity through the needles into his skin.

Several minutes into the session, the skin around the needle points started turning red.

“I can tell it’s working,” Tello said.

If you were to ask Tello exactly how acupuncture works, he’d give you two explanations. One involves Chinese medicine, which has been around for 3,000 years and is based on the concept of Qi.

“Qi is a belief in traditional Chinese medicine to be an energy that flows through the body,” Tello said. “It flows through meridians, and diseases interrupt that flow of energy. If you believe in traditional Chinese medicine and their theory, there’s a disruption of that flow of energy through those meridians; and what we’re trying to do in acupuncture is restore that energy.”

In contrast, Tello said, Western alternative medicine assumes acupuncture points affect neurotransmitters, which in turn control pain. Under that theory, if the pain receptors are reset, the pain is managed, he said.

Tello said he and other physicians at Sanford ran a discussion on homeopathic medicine and alternative medicine in the early 1990s.

“Many times you get into situations where the traditional Western medicine is not working. So you ask yourself, ‘Well, what else can I offer my patients?’ — especially in the area of pain management,” he said.

Tello signed up for an acupuncture course in California after that conversation and has been practicing it ever since. When he started, he said some physicians at the hospital thought it was quackery.

“Physicians are scientifically trained,” he said. “All these studies, you have to have proof. Traditional Chinese medicine is totally different. You have to have an open mind going into it, because when we talk about energy flowing through meridians in the body it’s like, ‘Is that just hocus pocus?’ You don’t know.”

Tello said acupuncture isn’t a cure-all, and it doesn’t work for all patients. He also warns of sham operations, in which people claim they’re acupuncturists and just stick needles anywhere.

“And then it doesn’t work,” said Tello.

He said he thinks Elhard will need two more treatments before his back pain is completely gone. Treatment times vary for each person, he said.

After Elhard’s most recent treatment, Tello told him: “You’ll be dancing in the streets soon.”