Acupuncture helped the mother overcome the migraine and hypertension during pregnancy. By Dr.Arthur Fan

Acupuncture helped the mother overcome the migraine and hypertension during pregnancy

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Acupuncture normalized hypertension. Posted by Dr.Arthur Fan

Many patients choose anti-hypertension medications when diagnosed with hypertension. Many medical professionals also suggest patients with hypertension use such medications as soon as possible, and as long as possible. The reason being to prevent heart, brain and kidney complications caused by long-term and/or very high hypertension.

However, it would benefit patients with the stage one hypertension to seek non-medication treatment first.  At stage one, hypertension is more related to the imbalance of a patients’ autonomic nervous system; the high activity of sympathic nerve and low activity of vagus nerve. This imbalance can be corrected by one or more of the following: resting, meditation(such as Tai ji, Qigong or meditation-like yoga), acupuncture, or Chinese herbology. A lower sodium diet will also help to some extent.

Recently, there are have been few patients with hypertension who came to see me. One patient had hypertension for about four months prior the her visit due to high stress. Her father was very ill and passed away. She flew to his hospital prior to his death and stayed there to take care of him for many days. She did not get enough sleep and her BP was consistently 140-160/90-110mmHg.   When she came to me, her BP was 150/85mmHg. I gave her an acupuncture treatment, and after half hour’s treatment, her BP lowered to 126/86mmHg. I gave her an herbal pill, Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan to use at home for one week. Today, she saw me again and reported that her BP was very stable-about 124/86mmHg(we confirmed this data). I treated her with acupuncture once again, and she admitted to feeling very relaxed.

Another patient who already has had stage two hypertension for a few years came to my office recently. She has been using acupuncture and herbs, and her blood pressure has also returned to normal.

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The acute effects of acupuncture upon autonomic balance in healthy Subjects. Posted by Dr.Arthur Fan

From Am J Chin Med. 2010;38(5):839-47. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20821816

The acute effects of acupuncture upon autonomic balance in healthy Subjects.

Carpenter RJ, Dillard J, Zion AS, Gates GJ, Bartels MN, Downey JA, De Meersman RE.

Source

Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.

Abstract

Restoration of the sympathovagal (S/V) balance, involving a lowering of sympathetic and/or an augmentation of vagal modulation or a combination of both is associated with improvements in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. To determine whether acupuncture exerts a favorable influence upon resting blood pressure and sympathovagal balance, a single-blind cross-over investigation was used to study the acute effects of acupuncture on S/V balance in normal healthy subjects. The ANOVA revealed a significant lowering of the sympathovagal balance (LF:HF) during rest for the acupuncture treatment from pre (4 +/- 2 nu) to post (2.2 +/- 1.8 nu)(p < 0.05). No such change was seen during sham treatment. The ANOVA revealed significant differences in systolic blood pressures during rest (114 +/- 4 vs. 108 +/- 3 mmHg) for the acupuncture treatment (p < 0.05). No significance was found during the sham treatment. The ANOVA failed to reveal any significant improvements in sympathovagal balance during the sustained isometric contraction. The clinical significance of these findings appears to suggest that acupuncture treatment might be beneficial in lowering blood pressure at rest. Furthermore, the lowering of the blood pressure might be in part due to a lowering of the sympathovagal balance. These findings are of importance since acupuncture treatments are non-pharmacological and have no known detrimental side-effects. This investigation employed healthy volunteers, yet acupuncture has been found to have more potent effects in animal models of hypertension and or in the presence of an autonomic imbalance.

PMID:20821816 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

www.ChineseMedicineDoctor.US

 

 

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Cupping for hypertension: a systematic review.

Clin Exp Hypertens. 2010;32(7):423-5. Epub 2010 Sep 9.

Cupping for hypertension: a systematic review.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20828224

Lee MS, Choi TY, Shin BC, Kim JI, Nam SS. Source Division of Standard Research, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, South Korea. drmslee@gmail.com

Abstract

The objective of this review is to assess the clinical evidence for or against cupping as a treatment for hypertension. We searched the literature using 15 databases from their inception to 30 June 2009, without language restrictions. We included all clinical trials (CTs) of cupping to treat hypertension in human patients. Risk of bias was assessed using the Cochrane criteria. Two CTs met all inclusion criteria. One RCT (randomized CT) assessed the effectiveness of dry cupping on changes in cerebral vascular function compared with drug therapy. Their results suggested significant effect in favor of cupping on vascular compliance and degree of vascular filling. One uncontrolled observational study (UOS) tested wet cupping for acute hypertension and found that a one-time treatment reduced blood pressure. In conclusion, the evidence is not significantly convincing to suggest cupping is effective for treating hypertension. Further research is required to investigate whether it generates any specific effects for that condition.

Dr.Arthur Fan’s view:

Cupping is an effective, safe and easy way to treat the hypertension, esp. for the satge one.  However, due to limited information, many people could not know this is an effective way to treat people’s hypertension. Investing for its scientific study is a little bit charllenge, because this study will not give the industry any benefit (for drug study may have a big “money return”.)

Patients could use cupping by themselve in home, once a day for two weeks, and take BP everyday, then could see how effective it is!

The mechanism of cupping, is adjusting the “Qi flow” (adjusting autonomic nervous system), activating the blood circulation(at least the microcirculation), then BP automatically back to normal.

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