Acupuncture Works Better Than Drugs for Hot Flashes

Just as the New Year starts, for some of us at least, the news is wonderful. For those women who have been taking medication to deal with hot flashes, a new study led by Dr. Eleanor Walker of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, finds that acupuncture is just as effective as medication.

Acupuncture was just as effective as the drug Effexor, also called venlafaxine, in managing symptoms including hot flashes and night sweats. But when you add in the fact that not only were there no side effects from acupuncture but instead women reported increased energy, overall sense of well-being and sexual desire, then in my book it works better!

In contrast those taking Effexor reported side effects including nausea, headache, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, increased blood pressure fatigue and anxiety.

I would recommend reading the article on MSNBC that goes into more detail.

Serious Warning On Birth Control Patch

As reported in the New York Times on April 5, the Ortho Evra birth control patch, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson has found to cause 50 deaths which occurred between 2002-2006.

Serious side effects such as strokes and heart attacks have been reported as well.

While news of serious side effects did come out in November 2005 in the form of warning the public about potential risks, the new report says that J& J knew even before the product hit the market that the dosage was higher than FDA regulations allowed.

In 1988 the FDA banned birth control pills with more than 50 micograms of estrogen. While J & J said their patch had 30-38 it had in fact altered the reports to get to that number and another study said the dosage could actually be 76 micrograms of estrogen.

Acupunture Can Help with Menstrual Pain

Even though acupunture is so widely known to help in pain management that many insurance plans pay for it, this is the first time I have heard about acupuncture helping with menstrual pain.

As reported on MSNBC, there is a new study from Germany that show this holistic method works both for pain and "improve the quality of life for some women".

It turns out the Univeristy of Maryland's Health Center also lists acupuncture as a treatment for dysmennorahe ( which is menstrual pain). Below is their take on it.

The National Institutes of Health recommend acupuncture as either a supplemental or alternative treatment for dysmennorhea. This recommendation is supported by a well-designed trial involving 43 women with dysmenorrhea. Women treated with acupuncture showed a dramatic reduction in both pain and the need for pain medication

Acupressure is also effective at reducing the pain. A study of 216 female students found that acupressure and ibuprofen were significantly better than a placebo, or “dummy pill,” at reducing pain.

Serious Effects For Women Took Estrogen-Progestin Pills

First the good news. The heart trouble associated with taking HRT ( hormone replacement treatment) goes away 2 years after women stop taking these drugs. As you might recall a study was stopped and women were encouraged to get off these pills ( six years ago) due to both heart risks and risk of breast cancer.

The bad news is that now researchers have found that there are new risks for cancer, particularly lung tumors, in women who had taken estrogen-progestin pills for about five years, according to a report on CNN.

The analysis focused on participants' health in the first two to three years after the study's end. During that time, those who'd taken hormones but stopped were 24% more likely to develop any kind of cancer than women who'd taken dummy pills during the study.

"There's still a lot of uncertainty about the cause of the increased cancer risk," said analysis co-author Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Can Eastern Medicine Save Us From Hot Flashes?

It seems so, according to a study published Oct.3 and reported in the journal Fertility & Sterility. (Who names these journals?). In a study women had fewer and less severe symptoms during the night after receiving acupuncture.

In the CNN article, the explanation given for why acupuncture might work is that it can alter signals among nerve cells or can affect the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system. "There's also some evidence that acupuncture affects hormones related to both sleep and menopause. However, for now, the mechanism by which acupuncture might affect hot flashes is not completely understood,” said Dr. Rachel Manber, author of the study.

That's what I love about hearing Western medicine experts evaluate Eastern medicine. We don't understand how it works so we have to study it forever to see if we can use it. For how many thousands of years has acupuncture been used in the East? I'm guessing if it didn't work they would have stopped using it by now.

So I say don't wait until an American medical facility has given it the golden seal of approval. Try it and see if it works for you.

In case you are really worried, my holistic MD uses acupuncture all of the time for a variety of ailments and gets good results. (Now are you reassured?)

Women's Intuition On Menopause?


It seems that the majority of women, over 50%, according to a study whose results appeared in the May/June issue of Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society, are now using soy supplements and other herbs to deal with menopause. ( Who knew they had such a journal?)


But I think we all know that many women are taking natural supplements to help them through menopause, which by the way is a natural condition and not a disease! The most common herbs used were gingko biloba, ginseng, St. John's wort, black cohosh and combination herbal remedies.

When asked why they used herbs, most women said they felt they were a safer alternative to hormone therapy and many wanted to use "natural" products.

I vote for women's intuition as why many women are turning to these natural methods. I think we would all rather use natural remedies for our bodies and we are now finally sharing among ourselves the remedies that generations before us used.