ACUPUNCTURE AND HORMONES
by London Acupuncture Practitioner Roisin Golding
I once met a woman at a literary party who had committed matricide. Matricide! After spending time in prison, she was eventually released on the grounds of diminished responsibility. She was found to have a severe hormonal imbalance which produced an extreme form of pre-menstrual tension. She is now, and will probably be for the rest of her reproductive life, taking hormone pills.
Is chemical therapy, such as hormone replacement therapy, the only viable treatment when there is a measurable chemical imbalance in the body?
Acupuncturists have long claimed success in treating gynaecological problems. The earliest records of Chinese medical writings on the subject date back three thousand years, some found inscribed on tortoise shells and bones. PMS, menopausal symptoms, infertility, and irregular periods, are some of the more common ailments treated in the modern-day acupuncture clinic.
During menopause, hormonal changes occur in response to the decline in ovarian function. This leads both to insufficient oestrogen production from the ovaries and a decline in progesterone, a hormone secreted during the second half of each month as a direct consequence of ovulation. The resulting symptoms - hot flushes, insomnia, palpitations, and bone and muscle pains, cause many women to seek medical help.
In the West, the end of the woman's reproductive life is increasingly seen as a disease to be 'immunised' against, using HRT preventively before menopause begins. Acupuncture, in contrast, seeks to harmonise the transition from a reproductive to a nonreproductive phase of life with minimal discomfort. It also seeks to support and strengthen the woman's essential energy (jing energy), the decline of which leads to osteoporosis and poor mental functioning. But can it compete with HRT?
One trial in a French hospital compared three groups of menopausal women:- those treated by acupuncture; those by HRT; and those who received no treatment. A range of blood and urine tests were carried out to assess a whole range of chemical effects. Both acupuncture and HRT produced comparable changes in oestrogen levels. However, only acupuncture produced an increased level of thyroid stimulating hormone, which increases metabolism, and an increase in testosterone levels (the male hormone which is produced by the ovaries in small amounts) and which may help safeguard against breast cancer and bone loss.
One difficulty for Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture, lies in explaining how it works from a Western medical perspective. The acupuncture treatment of menopausal women typically involves increasing both the yin (soft and 'female' energy) and yang (hard and 'male' energy) which naturally reduces throughout life. As Prof. Edzard Ernst, a Professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, England, stated, "the existence of yin and yang has not been substantiated by scientific research."
If Ernst understood a basic tenet of Chinese medicine, namely that yin and yang do not have an independent existence, it would save him a lot of unnecessary searching. Yin and yang are primarily descriptive terms. To say that their existence has not been substantiated is like saying the existence of up and down has not been proved.
Qi (energy) has also escaped detection, although some researchers claim that a small electrical current is produced at acupuncture points, and that this electrical current is synonymous with qi.
However, when it comes to acupuncture diagnosis and treatment, the confusion multiplies. At some stage in acupuncture's long history, the acupuncture meridians (pathways) were named after the internal organ through which they passed. This has led to a medical comedy of errors.
I once had the embarrassing task of explaining to a physician how burning a herb on an acupuncture point (known as moxibustion) reduced excessively heavy periods. It happened to be the spleen point on the woman's big toe. But, the spleen is, of course tucked safely under the left ribs (and not the toe) and has no known action on the uterus. Luckily his sense of humour did not interfere with his appreciation of the excellent results.
Similar confusion arose when a trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "proved beyond reasonable doubt" that moxibustion over the little toe of a pregnant women with breech presentation (the baby presents buttocks first) causes significant increase in foetal movement, and that after 2 weeks over 75 percent of the treated women's foetuses turned to present normally.
The acupuncture point in question is on the bladder meridian. The optimistic Dr. Richard Halvorsen of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, is looking for mechanisms - within a western biomedical framework - to explain the phenomenon. Methinks he'll be looking a long while if he refuses to acknowledge the elusive 'qi' factor.
Meanwhile, Ernst claimed that either the acupuncturists involved in the trial or the patients themselves could have subconsciously introduced some other mechanism which turned the foetus, without either the acupuncturist or the patient being aware of the manoeuvre. As Einstein once jokingly said, if the facts don't fit the (dominant) theory then the facts must be wrong.
While trial after trial proves the fact that acupuncture works when applied according to Chinese medical theory, the confusion over mechanisms will remain as long as Western doctors refuse to take the existence of qi seriously and as long as acupuncturists insist on using Western medical terms when referring to Chinese concepts.
