Hot flashes and menopause, is acupuncture a good option?

Acupuncture2Hot flashes and menopause, is acupuncture a good option?

If you have gone through or are about to go through menopause, hot flashes can be a nightmare, depending on how your body treats you while you go through your changes.

Acupuncture is commonly offered for symptoms that can alter sleep, your social life and your ability to concentrate.  My wife had experienced it badly at times, and we turned to acupuncture with varying results.   Sometimes, it seem to help and reduce the symptoms with the help of herbs, while at other times, it did not help at all.

Recently, the NY Times weighed in on this.  Check out their article on Acupuncture and hot flashes.

Acupuncture Offers No Benefits Over Placebo for Hot Flashes of Menopause

By Nicholas Bakalar

Acupuncture is no more effective for menopausal hot flashes than a sham version of the procedure, a randomized trial has found.

Researchers studied 327 menopausal women over 40 who had hot flashes at least seven times a day.

Over eight weeks, they gave half the women standardized Chinese medicine acupuncture procedures.

The other half received a sham treatment using a blunt needle with a technique that gives the physical and visual impression of genuine acupuncture but does not penetrate the skin. Researchers “œinserted” the needles at three sites that were not acupuncture points.

The study, in Annals of Internal Medicine, included 10 treatments over eight weeks. At the start of the study, and periodically over the next six months, the women used diaries to record the intensity and frequency of their hot flashes.

There was some improvement in symptoms in both groups, but there were no differences between the groups in severity or frequency of hot flashes, or in secondary outcomes for menopause-specific quality of life, anxiety and depression.

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