Acupuncture for Women’s Health
By Bindi Zhu, M.D. (China) Ph.D. (Traditional Chinese Medicine)
Dr. Zhu believes conventional medicine and Chinese medicine work well together because their strengths are almost diametrically opposed. Like a good marriage, each partner should complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses while maintaining the same goals. In this case, it’s good health.
Western medicine has many strengths, such as treating trauma, medical and surgical emergencies, fungal, bacterial, and parasitic infections, replacing damaged hips, knees, bones, other articulations, and cosmetic and reconstructive surgery.
On the other hand, Chinese medicine emphasizes maintaining the body’s relative balance of yin and yang. Although specific syndromes have some common characteristics, each person has their unique way of presenting symptoms. In Chinese medicine, it’s imperative to consider the individual’s unique constitution when making a diagnosis.
The ancient Chinese medical doctors concentrated on identifying how the body functions and how they depend on each other. Chinese medicine treatments boost the body’s natural healing potential by treating the root causes of dysfunction rather than just symptoms.
Another essential concept we talk about in traditional Chinese medicine is how to boost the immune system. Using Chinese Herbs, we can strengthen the body’s natural defenses and enhance its ability to maintain and heal itself. Recent research indicates that many of these herbs have large amounts of antioxidants. For example, gou qi zi, also known as wolfberry and Lycium Barbarum, has the highest ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value of any other food by volume.
Western and Chinese medicine come from two very different points of view. Chinese medicine originated from experimentation with medicinal substances from animal, plant, and mineral sources and pressure points/acupuncture points. Empirical evidence collected from these experiments combined with Daoist and Confucian philosophy produced the body of knowledge that today we call Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM.
Daoism’s influence extends not only to Chinese medical theory but also to its practice. It recognizes the limitations of coercive power and encourages “leading, not dominating,” much like an acupuncture needle guides Qi, or an herbal formula supports the immune system to fight off disease.
In China, acupuncture is a small part of traditional Chinese medicine. Herbal medicine is used more and, often, in combination with western pharmaceuticals. China has taken traditional Chinese medical philosophy and uses it side by side with western medicine in hospitals today. If you go into any hospital in China, you will see these two systems seamlessly used together. Chinese medicine is not considered “alternative medicine” in China but is a mainstream system that plays an essential role in providing health care alongside Western medicine. Maybe someday, the Western world will adopt an approach similar to this one.
This idea seems to be spreading to the West, where 94 percent of the 125 United States medical schools reported offering complementary or alternative medicine courses. In Austin, we don’t have a medical school, but we do have students from the University of Texas medical school at Galveston who intern at my clinic.
Although Chinese and conventional medicine appear very different on the surface, they work very well together in many situations. More and more scientific studies are being authored in the West to support the large body of research already available in the East.
How does Acupuncture treat women’s health?
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) recognizes women’s’ health issues as pattern-related syndromes. Instead of treating symptoms, the root cause is addressed by treating each person as a whole instead of targeting a specific symptom. Women using TCM typically experience a dramatic improvement in all their symptoms, whether they deal with infertility, endometriosis, PMS, ovarian cysts, or menopause.
Lower back pain during pregnancy
Several studies show the efficacy of acupuncture and auricular acupuncture to treat lower back and pelvic pain during pregnancy. Yale University is conducted a NIH-funded study that lasted three years using ear acupuncture for lower back pain during pregnancy. The results showed those in the acupuncture group reported a significant reduction in pain compared to the control and sham acupuncture group.
In 2004 JAMA published a study from Brazil where acupuncture was used to relieve back pain during pregnancy. Average pain reduction in the group decreased by at least 50 percent over time compared to 15 percent in the placebo group. The researchers reported that the use of paracetamol was also lower in the acupuncture group. These results indicate that acupuncture seems to alleviate lower back pain and pelvic pain during pregnancy and increase the capacity for some physical activities while diminishing the need for drugs, which is a great advantage during this period. (Guerriero da Silva 2004)
Labor pain/Inducing labor
A study found that electro-acupuncture can significantly increase the frequency and strength of uterine contractions. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a treatment condition, consisting of the application via surface electrodes of a 30-Hz current to the points “spleen 6” (lower leg) and “liver 3” (foot), or a placebo condition, in which the equipment was attached but not activated. (Dunn 1989)
Breech presentation
In November of ’98, JAMA published a study where moxibustion was used to correct breech presentation. After 1 to 2 weeks of daily treatments with moxibustion, 75 percent of the fetuses in the intervention group were cephalic versus 48 percent of the control group. (Cardini 1998)
In 2004 an Italian group of researchers found that the proportion of cephalic version was lower in the observation group, where 36 percent of the infants were cephalic at delivery than the active-treatment group, where 55 percent were cephalic. (Neri 2004)
PMS
Acupuncture’s success rate in treating PMS symptoms was 77.8%, compared to 5.9% in the placebo group. Acupuncture’s positive influence in treating PMS symptoms can be ascribed to its effects on the serotoninergic and opioidergic neurotransmission that modulates various psychosomatic functions. (Habek 2002)
Dysmenorrhea
Acupressure at Sanyinjiao (Spleen 6) has been shown to be very effective in reducing primary dysmenorrhea. (Chen 2004)
A study in 2003 used acupuncture to treat primary dysmenorrhea. Ninety-three percent of the women who received acupuncture either did not have a reoccurrence of primary dysmenorrhea, no longer needed medication for the condition, or did not experience symptoms two years after the acupuncture treatment compared to 4 percent of the women who used sham acupuncture. (Habek 2003)
Menopause
In China, most menopausal women use Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), particularly Chinese herbs, instead of hormone therapy. A history of long-time use and thorough documentation make it the treatment of choice for these menopausal women.
The treatment protocol for reclaiming this hormonal balance ties into the individual’s constitution, immune system, stress level, emotions, and other illnesses. For example, although many women may come into the clinic diagnosed as menopausal, each may demonstrate a different combination of possible symptoms. Some typical symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, palpitations, insomnia, heavy menstrual flow, dryness, alternating chills and fever, mood swings, depression, poor memory, etc.
The benefits of using Chinese herbal medicine to treat menopause seem significant compared to possible side effects from hormone replacement therapy.
Infertility
When discussing female infertility, in Chinese medicine, we describe the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis as a responsibility of the Heart, Liver, Kidney, and Uterus organ systems. These systems are responsible for fertility, pregnancy, and the regulation of the menstrual cycle.
Traditional Chinese medicine considers the Kidney the foundation of fertility. Its main functions are to “store essence, dominate human reproduction and development, dominate water metabolism and the reception of qi, produce bone marrow to fill up the brain, dominate bone, manufacture blood, manifest in the hair, [and] open into the ear.”
Chinese medicine prepares the body for conception by bringing it back into balance. For different women, this might mean fine-tuning and regulating the menstrual cycle, raising low sperm count and motility, correcting hormonal imbalances, eliminating immune system incompatibilities, easing tubal obstructions, relieving stress-related dysfunction, reversing ejaculatory defects, and correcting erectile dysfunction.
Morning sickness
Acupuncture and acupressure are very effective nonpharmacologic methods for the treatment of hyperemesis gravidarum for morning sickness.
Habek showed in 2004 the efficiency of the morning sickness treatment with acupuncture of Pc 6 was 90%, with acupressure of Pc 6 was 63.6%, with placebo “sham” acupuncture 12.5%, and with placebo acupressure 0%. CONCLUSION: Acupuncture (p < 0.0001) and acupressure (p < 0.1) are. (Habek 2004)
Migraine
Migraine is a typical “women’s disease”: the fluctuations of sex hormones, particularly estrogen, during a woman’s reproductive life show a direct and significant influence on migraine course. Even if, during pregnancy, a high percentage of migraineurs report an improvement of symptomatology, it is still controversial how to manage migraine crises occurring during pregnancy, considering that almost all drugs are partially or totally contraindicated during gestation. (Allais 2003)
JAMA reported in 2005 that the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research in Munich, Germany, conducted a study on migraine headaches where acupuncture was found to reduce the number of days participants had headaches by 50 percent compared to 15 percent in the control group. (Linde 2005)
Irritable bowel syndrome
Besoussan et al. showed in 1998 that irritable bowel syndrome responds well to Chinese herbal medicine. In 1998, JAMA reported a study where patients were divided into three groups: individualized Chinese herbal formulation, a standard Chinese herbal formulation, and a placebo group. Those who received Chinese herbal medicine had significant improvements in bowel symptom scores as rated by patients than those in the placebo group. On follow-up 14 weeks later after completion of treatment, only the individualized Chinese herbal medicine group maintained improvement out of the three groups. (Bensoussan 1998)
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Note: Capitalization of organ names refers to organ system classification according to Chinese medical theory, not necessarily to the physical organ.