Have you considered acupuncture for menopausal symptoms? A brief course of acupuncture may help to ease troublesome menopausal symptoms, suggests a small study published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Menopause symptoms
Menopausal symptoms are common and can have a major impact on quality of life, health and wellbeing, as well as productivity. Hot flushes are one of the most common symptoms, and these can go on for several years. Others include heavy sweating, emotional vulnerability, sleep disturbances, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, vaginal dryness and reduced sex drive.
Hormonal and other drugs can treat the various symptoms, but they are not without side effects. And the evidence for other non-pharmacological approaches, such as exercise, relaxation, and herbal/dietary remedies, isn’t very convincing, say the researchers.
The evidence for acupuncture
The Danish study of 70 menopausal women dealing with moderate to severe symptoms demonstrated that acupuncture was associated with reductions in hot flushes, excess sweating, mood swings, sleep disturbances, and skin and hair problems. The findings prompt the researchers to conclude that acupuncture offers “a realistic” treatment option for women who can’t, or don’t want to, use hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Previous research suggests that acupuncture might be helpful, but design flaws or quality issues have undermined the findings, say the researchers. In a bid to address this, they randomly allocated 70 menopausal women who met their inclusion criteria to either five weeks of standardised Western medical acupuncture, using pre-defined acupuncture points, or no acupuncture until after six weeks.
At six weeks 80% of the women in the acupuncture group, said that they felt that the sessions had helped them. Compared with those who had not been given acupuncture, they were significantly less troubled by hot flushes. There was also significant differences between the two groups in the severity/frequency of day and night sweats, general sweating, sleep disturbances, emotional and physical symptoms, and skin and hair problems.
What can we offer you?
If you are peimenopausal or menopausal we can offer you the same treatment used in this trial. Dr Sarah Bayliss has worked in an NHS menopause clinic, and now in a private menopause clinic. Her experience in these clinics, and her own personal experience of menopause symptoms ensures she understands how troublesome your symptoms may be.
Whether you are taking HRT and find it doesn’t help all your symptoms, or if you are unable to due to health reasons, we can still offer a 5 week course of acupuncture. There are very few contraindications to acupuncture, and these can be found here.
To book an appointment or the full course of 5 weeks please click here.
