According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. And ethnicity doesn’t matter, as people of all racial and ethnic groups are impacted. With such serious statistics, many might wonder what treatment options are available. Did you know that acupuncture can help with treating heart disease, as well as many of its contributing factors? Read on to learn how.

Whether as a solo treatment or in combination with other traditional medical treatments, acupuncture is a great option for those suffering from heart disease, particularly as a preventative measure. Not surprisingly, the top three risk factors for developing heart disease are high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking. While lifestyle changes are also key to preventing heart disease, there are some additional steps you can take through regular acupuncture treatments to mitigate the risk factors of heart disease.

Acupuncture Points and Herbs for Treating Heart Disease

There are six common points related to treating heart disease:

• HT1 (Ji Quan) – located under the arm and is used for heart pain, chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, and palpitations.
• HT9 (Shao Chong) – located on the pinky and is used for heart attack, stroke, and heart pain.
• SP3 (Taibai) – located on the bottom of the foot and is used for heart pain.
• UB15 (Xin Shu) – located near the spine and is used for heart palpitations, anxiety, and heart pain.
• Hu Po – herbal formulation used for tremors, to stop palpitations, to help with insomnia, and used for coronary heart disease.
• Xue Fu Zhu Yu Wan – herbal formulation used for coronary artery disease, angina, and other cardiovascular health issues.

What the Research Says

Northwestern Medicine is currently studying acupuncture as an effective treatment for heart rhythm disorders, pain, and nausea, and for use after cardiac surgery. Researchers sought to answer three main questions: 1. Would patients embrace acupuncture during heart surgery? 2. Is it logistically feasible in a cardiac surgery setting to provide daily acupuncture to patients? 3. Does acupuncture impact medical outcomes such as AFib and post-surgical symptoms like pain, nausea, stress, and anxiety?

According to lead researcher Dr. Kim Feingold, “We learned that acupuncture after open heart surgery is feasible in this fast-paced environment – even in the intensive care unit the day after surgery – and was well tolerated by patients with no adverse effects.” The research team concluded that acupuncture used after heart surgery produced lower rates of post-operative atrial fibrillation, reduced pain, nausea, stress and anxiety, less time in the intensive care unit, and a reduced need for antiarrhythmic medication.

Help with Risk Factors

As mentioned previously, acupuncture can also help patients address risk factors that can lead to future heart issues. For example, acupuncture is great at treating high blood pressure, helping people to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, and regulate sleep. Acupuncture looks to return balance to the body, thus improving overall health and wellness. If you suffer from one or more of these risk factors, it will likely take many sessions to address these issues. Your acupuncturist will work with you to conduct a complete health history and treatment plan addressing each of your concerns. The treatment plan may also include herbal formulas to help patients reach their health goals. 

Don’t wait until a more serious issue arises, if you are looking to jumpstart your New Year with new health goals, make an appointment today. Share your concerns, be honest with your practitioner and let them help you to achieve your health goals. Better health is within your reach and acupuncture can help you get there.

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According to the National Institutes of Health, research has demonstrated that acupuncture could be helpful for a variety of pain conditions including back pain, knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, and postoperative pain. There is also evidence to suggest that it helps relieve joint pain “associated with the use of aromatase inhibitors.”

Also, according to the NIH, an analysis of the data from 20 different studies totaling 6,376 participants with documented “painful conditions” showed that the benefits of acupuncture continued to be felt for a year after the end of treatment for all conditions except for neck pain.

However, pain isn’t the only condition acupuncture can help with. The NIH says that acupuncture has been studied for “at least 50 other health problems” and there is evidence that “acupuncture may help relieve seasonal allergy symptoms, stress incontinence in women, and nausea and vomiting associated with cancer treatment.”

Listed below are just a handful of results from acupuncture studies documenting how treatment helps for some of the most common health conditions. More details about each of these studies can be found by visiting the National Institutes of Health acupuncture facts page which is where this research was gathered.

Osteoarthritis

In a 2018 review, data from 10 studies (2,413 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than no treatment for osteoarthritis pain, and data from 9 studies (2,376 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than sham acupuncture. The difference between acupuncture and no treatment was greater than the difference between acupuncture and sham acupuncture. Most of the participants in these studies had knee osteoarthritis, but some had hip osteoarthritis. The pain-relieving effect of acupuncture was comparable to that of NSAIDs.

Headaches & Migraines

A 2020 review of nine studies that compared acupuncture with various drugs for preventing migraine found that acupuncture was slightly more effective, and study participants who received acupuncture were much less likely than those receiving drugs to drop out of studies because of side effects.

There’s moderate-quality evidence that acupuncture may reduce the frequency of migraines (from a 2016 evaluation of 22 studies with almost 5,000 people). The evidence from these studies also suggests that acupuncture may be better than sham acupuncture, but the difference is small. There is moderate- to low-quality evidence that acupuncture may reduce the frequency of tension headaches (from a 2016 evaluation of 12 studies with about 2,350 people).

Seasonal Allergies

A 2015 evaluation of 13 studies of acupuncture for allergic rhinitis, involving a total of 2,365 participants, found evidence that acupuncture may help relieve nasal symptoms. The study participants who received acupuncture also had lower medication scores (meaning that they used less medication to treat their symptoms) and lower blood levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE), a type of antibody associated with allergies.

A 2014 clinical practice guideline from the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery included acupuncture among the options health care providers may offer to patients with allergic rhinitis.

Postoperative Pain

A 2016 evaluation of 11 studies of pain after surgery (with a total of 682 participants) found that patients treated with acupuncture or related techniques 1 day after surgery had less pain and used less opioid pain medicine after the operation.

With positive results like these, it’s no wonder the demand for acupuncture treatments is on the rise. Make an appointment today and talk to your local acupuncturist. They will take a thorough health history and answer any questions you may have. The research speaks for itself! Acupuncture works so call today!

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As we enter a new year, it is natural to want to look back on the last one. As humans, we have the gift and the hurdle of marking time, so it can feel helpful to recall memories we want to hold on to or look for lessons we can take with us.  

To that end, here are three categories in which research into the type, application and efficacy of acupuncture saw significant advancements in 2020, findings that will certainly help guide us as we move forward. In a year that saw so much focus on our health, these findings offer some good news in the fields of pain management without opioids, migraine headaches, and insight into why it is that acupuncture is effective as an anti-inflammatory. 

Category 1: Non-opioid Pain Treatment

Because of the safety and non-addictive nature of acupuncture, researchers have been studying its effects as a pain-reliever for at least a decade, hoping to find an alternative to opioid painkillers. In October, researchers from the Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston published the results of their analysis of 16 medical reviews and 11 clinical trials that looked at the efficacy of acupuncture for treating pain related to knee osteoarthritis, back pain and fibromyalgia. They found acupuncture is effective in all three cases. The analysis also corroborates there is evidence that acupuncture stimulates the body’s natural opioid systems to achieve pain reduction, which we have talked about before. 

The winner of this year’s research competition through the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture was a submission about acupuncture as an effective non-opioid pain therapy in pediatric sickle cell cases. Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center studied patients in the New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Hematology unit over a period of seven years. They found that acupuncture significantly decreased their patient’s pain scores approximately 65 percent of the time without any adverse side effects.

Research published in October by the journal Anesthesiology found acupuncture helped reduce post-operative pain levels. The study looked at a group of 106 veterans getting different surgeries. When compared to the control group of patients, the veterans who received acupuncture before their surgeries experienced less pain afterward, less anxiety and used fewer opioid painkillers to manage their pain after the surgery. This study, while it needs followup research, has important implications for reducing opioid dependency. Six percent of veterans who are given opioids after surgery become dependent on them, and veterans are twice as likely to die from overdoses as civilians, according to the study’s author, Brinda Krish. 

Category 2: Migraine Headaches

Highlighting the encouraging results from previous studies on acupuncture for migraine headaches, a 2020 analysis from researchers at Harvard Medical School, Georgetown University, University of Arizona, Creighton University, and Louisiana State University shows acupuncture is a safe way to alleviate or eliminate migraine headaches. Migraines affect over 15 percent of people in the United States, and they can be debilitating. In another study published this year, researchers found they can tailor acupuncture treatments to patients for better success rates by first understanding their specific brain structure through MRI scans. Using the scans and machine learning, specific patterns in patients’ brain gray matter were correlated with better responses to the acupuncture treatments.

Category 3: Anti-inflammatory Effects 

Last but not least, another study out of Harvard Medical School showed acupuncture can regulate the body’s response to certain bacterial infections. They found acupuncture improved patients’ survival rates and prevented disease progression of these bacterial infections. They also found their results were even more effective if the patients received acupuncture treatments before they were infected, adding to the body of evidence suggesting acupuncture is an important preventive medicine. The study showed acupuncture regulates systemic inflammation by activating certain neural pathways when specific acupoints were used. 

And that’s a wrap. These are just a few of the important studies to come out of the field of acupuncture research this year, and they all have important implications for our health moving forward. 

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