Acupuncture is used to treat far more than just pain

Under the Skin: Acupuncture is used to treat far more than just pain

Acupuncture isn't just for pain anymore. In fact, it's not even just for humans anymore.

Introduced to the U.S. in the late 1800s by Chinese immigrants, it now can be found nationwide and -- in what's probably the biggest indication that it has been accepted as legitimate -- most insurance companies cover it in some fashion.

Yes, it's still used to treat pain, but it's also for stress relief, to quit smoking, to reduce allergy symptoms and to help people sleep. In the Chattanooga area, you can find acupuncturists that treat all those and more.

ANIMAL ACUPUNCTURE

Gus the River Dog met his veterinarian when he was floating in his inflatable kayak down the Ocoee River.

Dr. Colleen Smith of the Chattanooga Holistic Animal Institute was on the river that day in her kayak. When she spotted the golden retriever, she just had to chat with Gus' human owner, Leila Thomason.

Now poor Gus is flopped across a rug in an examination room at CHAI, his back aching from arthritis in his spine. CHAI actually smells like chai -- a rich, soothing perfume laced with incense -- and soft chiming music wafts through the sound system. The ambiance is designed to soothe owners as well as pets.

Smith examines good-natured Gus, who sports a green bandana around his neck. Then Smith plucks needles from a silver box and inserts them into his back. Gus lifts his head, a bit startled, but does not make a sound.

"There's a slight tingling when the needle goes in, but it does not feel like a shot," Smith explains. "It probably does feel weird to him and he's wondering what I am doing."

As she lifts the next tiny sliver of a needle toward his back in her right hand, Gus put his paw on her left so they can shake hands. He does the same thing the next three times she reaches for a needle, as if trying to distract her with his adorable trick. Finally, though, he relaxes and rests his head on his paws.

Smith flicks a switch and a low-frequency electrical impulse moves through wires attached to the needles in Gus' furry back. He enjoys the electro massage so much, he lolls on his side and nuzzles Smith until she gives him a tummy rub.

In the next room, a chocolate lab puppy named Willow snoozes on a table, a collar of acupuncture needles glittering in her neck.

"I embraced Chinese medicine when I saw a retired racehorse suffering from ring bone (a severe form of arthritis attacking the horse's ankles) get an acupuncture treatment," Smith says. "After the treatment, the horse was running around happily. It was astonishing."

She earned her certification from the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society and founded an equine practice in 2008. She still makes house calls to farms and a riding school to treat horses with acupuncture.

While the shelves in CHAI's main treatment room contain some pharmaceuticals, most of the space is occupied by jars full of herbal mixes made according to traditional Chinese medicine.

"All these herbal treatments were made in America, so we know they are clean," Smith says. "I would love to see more doctors try herbal medicine for human patients, but Big Pharma would probably fight that trend."

The herbal medicine has poetic names like Settle the Yang, Sublime Joint Formula, Deep Heat Derma Relief and Subdue the Internal Wind.

Yes, the last one is used when your pet gets gassy.

GAME ON

Track star Lolo Jones was at the epicenter of "Mean Girls" stress at the London Summer Olympics as teammates sniped at her assertion that she was a 30-year old virgin and her nude cover for ESPN magazine.

Jones didn't win any Olympic medals, but her athletic prowess made her a winner in subsequent international competitions. She remains one of the few Americans to compete in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, hurdles in summer and as U.S. bobsled team brakewoman in winter. On Monday, she was in the pop-culture spotlight as the first celebrity this season voted off TV's behemoth hit, "Dancing with the Stars."

Chattanooga acupuncturist Bret Moldenhauer was ready to catch a redeye to Los Angeles if Jones pulled a muscle while dancing. He was treating her in London during the Olympics, decreasing her stress with acupuncture. And he has treated her during many of her other competitions, relieving her stress, reducing muscle inflammation and helping prevent joint or muscle pain by studying her gait and stride.

"Acupuncture is becoming so widely accepted in sports medicine that most professional teams have an acupuncturist who can treat players' injuries or help prevent them," says Moldenhauer, who treats several Olympic athletes as well as college players. "I was with Lolo when she was in London and will be treating her in future competitions. (Olympic track star and University of Tennessee alum) Deedee Trotter and (record-breaking sprinter) Tyson Gay are also my patients."

A large body of medical research over the past 20 years details how effective acupuncture is in treating sprains, anxiety, tendonitis and back pain -- conditions that frequently plague athletes. The website for Moldenhauer's Institute for Acupuncture & Wellness also lists the Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team and the Tampa Bay Buccaneer NFL players as patients.

"But my practice goes beyond sports medicine," adds Moldenhauer, who has hospital privileges at Erlanger Medical Center to treat patients. "Acupuncture is gaining more acceptance in the Western medical community.

"It's important that acupuncturists explain to patients what they can and cannot expect from acupuncture. For example, acupuncture cannot cure diabetes. But acupuncture can ease internal inflammation and many digestive issues that afflict a diabetic patient and make it easier for them to live a healthier life."

STRESS KILLS. SO DO HURRICANES, MUDSLIDES, EARTHQUAKES ...

When Yong Oh meets a patient who is sick with stress, he goes right for the ears.

There are points on the outside of the ears (not the ear canal) where acupuncture needles are placed to reduce stress dramatically. The needles are almost hair thin, ending in rounded points similar to a pine needles; they make tiny punctures painless.

It should go without saying: Do not try this at home.

Instead, go to someone with Oh's impressive credentials, including a Virginia Tech University degree in biology, a master's from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York and board-certification in Georgia and Tennessee for acupuncture.

He also passed the challenging written and hands-on exam administered by the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine to win certification that is recognized by all 50 states.

Like most acupuncturists, he does not accept insurance -- although most insurance companies now cover acupuncture treatments in certain cases. But his big heart prompts him to offer sliding fee scales to low-income clients. And he tackles what he views as an urgent American health problem -- stress -- with meditation classes and acupuncture treatments ranging from $8 to $20 at Chattanooga's Center for Mindful Living.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a 2013 report declaring a stress crisis in America. Stress worsens illnesses from cancer to heart disease by increasing inflammation, raising blood pressure, adding wear to the heart and delaying the body's healing processes.

The problem is especially acute for emergency personnel who may be tending those injured by tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and other disasters, work that often means 18-hour days with little sleep. Volunteers from Acupuncturists without Borders rush to disaster areas and offer free care to everyone from smoke jumpers and firefighters to ambulance drivers and emergency room doctors.

"These volunteers are an inspiration and they go to disaster areas like the Gulf Coast after Katrina, California during the wildfires and Haiti after the earthquake," Oh says. "The acupuncture treatments help keep the emergency personnel healthy and focused and able to think clearly."

Remote Area Medical, the Tennessee charity that offers free medical, dental and vision care to the impoverished, also welcomes volunteer acupuncturists among its health care professionals donating their time and service. And, while the charity is limited in the dental care it can provide, focusing on extractions, "an acupuncturist can relieve the pain that patient feels after the tooth is pulled," Oh says.

The Remote Area Medical website includes thank-yous from low-income manual laborers who say acupuncturists on duty relieved their back pain, bruised shoulders and strained muscles quickly and more thoroughly than pain medication they could no longer afford.

RED FLAGS FOR PATIENTS

Many states do not require certification for acupuncturists, but Bret Moldenhauer, who is certified in all 50 states, emphasizes that, just because it's legal to do acupuncture without certification, it's not a good idea.

Tennessee and Georgia require acupuncturists to be certified; Alabama does not.

Here is his checklist for what to look for in an acupuncturist:

• Do not go to a day spa or cosmetic surgeon to get acupuncture.

• State certification.

• A clean office and clean examination room.

• Don't trust claims that acupuncture can cure such serious diseases as cancer.

"My thinking is," he says, "acupuncture is most helpful to patients with an ailment where results can be measured and documented. For example, acupuncture has been shown to alleviate the nausea and vomiting that are chemotherapy side effects. But cancer itself is too complex, involves too many types of concurrent treatments, for us to know how acupuncture can specifically help a cancer patient. More studies would need to be done, more research, before we can know that."

Source of the story is here.

Acupuncture's Effect On Knee Pain

Acupuncture's Effect On Knee Pain

How Researchers Reached The Flawed Conclusion That Acupuncture Doesn't Help With Knee Pain

By Marygrace Taylor

Picture this scenario: An adult plagued with chronic headaches seeks relief by popping ibuprofen a few times a week. The meds help. Then she decides to stop taking them. And when she does, the pain creeps back.

Surprised? Not exactly. The last thing you'd deduce from this imaginary experiment is that ibuprofen doesn't help with headaches. But that's basically what researchers suggested about needle and laser acupuncture's effect on chronic knee pain in a new JAMA study. 

In the clinical trial, 282 adults age 50 and older with chronic knee pain were randomly assigned to needle or laser acupuncture treatments or a sham laser acupuncture treatment. After 12 weeks, participants who received the acupuncture reported modest improvements in pain. Then the treatments stopped, and nine months later, the participants had knee pain again. This, weirdly, led the researchers to conclude that acupuncture just doesn't offer relief from chronic knee pain.

Sounds confusing, right? Save for undergoing surgery, most chronic pain problems can never really be permanently solved. Even for treatments that make the discomfort vanish, it tends to come back once said treatment stops. That's sort of a given. "Acupuncture can be used as pain management, but it doesn't necessarily heal the pain permanently," says Michelle Goebel-Angel, licensed acupuncturist at Chicago's Raby Institute for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern.

There's more. The researchers of this small study posit that having a larger sample size might have yielded more significant results. Which is exactly what experts uncovered in 2012 meta-analysis of nearly 18,000 patients, which found that needle acupuncture does help with osteoarthritis, as well as other types of chronic pain.

Still, like many treatments, acupuncture doesn't have the same effect on everyone. But it's absolutely worth trying, and tends to be the type of thing where the benefits accumulate over time (as in, longer than 12 weeks). "When patients feel the relief, they believe it," says Goebel-Angel. "And that opens a new level of healing—the spiritual aspect of healing."

To read more, click  here.

Acupuncture is still Worth a Try

Acupuncture for knee arthritis fails one test but may still be worth a try

Posted October 01, 2014, 2:36 pm

Daniel Pendick, Executive Editor, Harvard Men's Health Watch

Acupuncture is a popular form of complementary and alternative therapy, but it has yet to win universal endorsement in the medical community—and usually isn’t covered by health insurance. Many satisfied customers continue to pay for treatment out of pocket in spite of mixed findings on the effectiveness of this ancient healing art.

A report published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) offers weak-to-no proof that acupuncture helps ease the pain of knee arthritis. On the other hand, it’s just one moderately sized study in a long and continuing series, and there’s still credible evidence to suggest that acupuncture helps some people with common pain conditions.

“I would be careful saying acupuncture doesn’t work for all pain conditions and no one should do it; we simply do not know enough yet,” says Peter Wayne, PhD, research director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Testing acupuncture

In the JAMA study, Australian researchers recruited 282 people over age 50 with moderate to severe knee pain from osteoarthritis. They were assigned at random to one of four options:

• no treatment
• traditional needle acupuncture
• laser acupuncture, which uses laser beams to stimulate acupuncture points on the body
• sham laser acupuncture, which looks like the real thing to study participants but doesn’t deliver any laser light

Including the sham treatment was important. When comparing acupuncture to no treatment at all, part of the pain relief is attributable to the placebo effect. That’s when people report feeling better after undergoing a treatment that they expect to work. Comparing real to “fake” acupuncture could reveal the effect of the treatment itself, minus the placebo effect.

In reality, though, it’s more complicated than that. Just talking to and touching an acupuncture client during the treatment can exert a subtle healing power.

Weak results

As in previous studies, people who had needle or laser acupuncture reported less pain and better physical function compared with the group that had no treatment at all. Keep in mind that the differences were quite small—like a 1-point reduction in pain on a scale of 0 to 10. That’s unlikely to impress someone with significant arthritis pain.

As for the sham acupuncture, the benefit disappeared when researchers compared the real and simulated treatment groups. Does it mean the effect of acupuncture was all placebo in this study—essentially, all in the participants’ heads?

Not necessarily. The study had only 70 people in each of the four groups. That would make it difficult to pick up differences in the effect of real and fake acupuncture. Wayne, a board member of the Society for Acupuncture Research, believes the totality of the evidence suggests acupuncture does actually relieve pain for many conditions—although exactly how remains a mystery.

“This is a small study that replicates what we already know,” Wayne says. “When you compare acupuncture to no treatment, there seems to be clinically meaningful differences for many pain conditions, including back pain and knee pain. Based on this pragmatic comparison, if I were deciding whether to send a family member or friend for a pain-related acupuncture treatment, I would say ‘yes’.”

Give it a try?

It’s common for people to use acupuncture to enhance their existing treatment with pain relievers and physical therapy—not to replace it. “Most of the studies have treated people once or twice a week for a couple of weeks, and then continued with monthly maintenance after that,” Wayne says. If after a few months you see no change, consider stopping.

One caveat is that there are multiple forms of acupuncture, such as needles that deliver a weak electrical stimulation. Also, acupuncture styles vary quite a bit from one practitioner to the next. That means if acupuncture doesn’t help, you can’t always be sure if the treatment didn’t work for you, or the acupuncturist.

The typical cost of acupuncture in the United States ranges from $65 to $125 per session. Private insurers usually don’t pay for it, nor do Medicare or Medicaid. A handful of plans may reimburse for physician-acupuncturists.

Harms from acupuncture are rare. Make sure you find a skilled practitioner who follows best practices for sterilizing needles and hand washing.

Ask your doctor to recommend a trusted provider. You can search for a trained acupuncturist in your area on the website of the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (www.nccaom.org) or call the organization at 904-598-1005.

Source of the article is here.

Acupuncture study hopes to reduce student stress

Acupuncture study hopes to reduce student stress

A student will enter into a quiet and dimly lit room.

Light, rhythmic music will be playing, creating a sense of tranquility.

The student will then lie on the table with their knees elevated by a pillow.

A heating blanket will envelop the student in warmth as they lie still.

A doctor will then enter the room, tell the student to relax and begin placing needles.

The needle enters the skin with a virtually painless pinprick. The doctor rotates the needle and a sensation of tingling travels through the nerves, just like when your foot falls asleep.

The theory is that this method can reduce student’s stress levels.

Continue to read, click here.

Traditional Chinese Medicine for Atopic Dermatitis

Traditional Chinese Medicine for Atopic Dermatitis

Atopic dermatitis (Atopic dermatitis, AD) is a kind of chronic recurrent dermatitis. So far, no curative treatment has been found yet. Acupuncture, as a kind of alternative medicine, Flying Needle is a kind of acupuncture, which has a unique curative effectiveness in improving the skin lesion and itch. A single-center, prospective, randomized clinical design was conducted. The curative effect of the combination of Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture for the treatment of Atopic dermatitis was assessed. Thirty (30) patients were treated with Flying Needle and Chinese herbal medicine. Because of personal reasons, one (1) dropped out. The patients accepted Flying Needle treatment 3 times a week and the internal medicine 3 times daily for in all 12 weeks. Before treatment, and after treat 4,8 and 12 weeks, assessments were performed. After treat 12 weeks, all patients of SCORADscore were dropped, with the mean SCORAD score declining to 19.58±12.21. The recovery and removal rate comparison (*δx²=5.28, P= 0.03<0.05). There are no side effects. The results hint that combine Flying Needle with Chinese herbal medicine are benefit on patients with atopic dermatitis and the effectiveness may better than oral medicine alone.

X Quan X, Cheng S, Ma H, Huang H, Wang B, Chen X. Combination of flying needle with Chinese Herbal Medicine in the treatment of Atopic dermatitis: A clinical trial. Pak J Pharm Sci. 2014 Sep;27(5 Suppl):1687-1690.

Debate on Acupuncture for Chronic Knee Pain

Acupuncture for Chronic Knee Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial

There is debate about benefits of acupuncture for knee pain.

Objective:

To determine the efficacy of laser and needle acupuncture for chronic knee pain.

Design, Setting, and Participants:

Zelen-design clinical trial (randomization occurred before informed consent), in Victoria, Australia (February 2010-December 2012). Community volunteers (282 patients aged ≥50 years with chronic knee pain) were treated by family physician acupuncturists.

Interventions:

No acupuncture (control group, n = 71) and needle (n = 70), laser (n = 71), and sham laser (n = 70) acupuncture. Treatments were delivered for 12 weeks. Participants and acupuncturists were blinded to laser and sham laser acupuncture. Control participants were unaware of the trial.

Main Outcomes and Measures:

Primary outcomes were average knee pain (numeric rating scale, 0 [no pain] to 10 [worst pain possible]; minimal clinically important difference [MCID], 1.8 units) and physical function (Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index, 0 [no difficulty] to 68 [extreme difficulty]; MCID, 6 units) at 12 weeks. Secondary outcomes included other pain and function measures, quality of life, global change, and 1-year follow-up. Analyses were by intention-to-treat using multiple imputation for missing outcome data.

Results:

At 12 weeks and 1 year, 26 (9%) and 50 (18%) participants were lost to follow-up, respectively. Analyses showed neither needle nor laser acupuncture significantly improved pain (mean difference; -0.4 units; 95% CI, -1.2 to 0.4, and -0.1; 95% CI, -0.9 to 0.7, respectively) or function (-1.7; 95% CI, -6.1 to 2.6, and 0.5; 95% CI, -3.4 to 4.4, respectively) compared with sham at 12 weeks. Compared with control, needle and laser acupuncture resulted in modest improvements in pain (-1.1; 95% CI, -1.8 to -0.4, and -0.8; 95% CI, -1.5 to -0.1, respectively) at 12 weeks, but not at 1 year. Needle acupuncture resulted in modest improvement in function compared with control at 12 weeks (-3.9; 95% CI, -7.7 to -0.2) but was not significantly different from sham (-1.7; 95% CI, -6.1 to 2.6) and was not maintained at 1 year. There were no differences for most secondary outcomes and no serious adverse events.

Conclusions and Relevance:

In patients older than 50 years with moderate or severe chronic knee pain, neither laser nor needle acupuncture conferred benefit over sham for pain or function. Our findings do not support acupuncture for these patients.

Hinman RS, McCrory P, Pirotta M, Relf I, Forbes A, Crossley KM, Williamson E, Kyriakides M, Novy K, Metcalf BR, Harris A, Reddy P, Conaghan PG, Bennell KL. Acupuncture for Chronic Knee Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2014 Oct 1;312(13):1313-1322.