As a physical therapy, acupuncture can have a variety of benefits for health and well-being and in recently years has been increasingly adopted by the medical community as a complimentary form of treatment.
Recent research has also revealed that it can be used to lengthen the lives of people who experience serious heart-failure. According to studies, its practice can help regulate heartbeat and blood pressure by reducing activity in the sympathetic nervous system. Heightened activation in the system can cause heart-failure by creating circumstances in which the heart has to work harder, as blood is pumped through vessels that have become constricted from over exertion. This can lead to an erratic and irregular heart beat which disrupts heart-rhythms and can lead to other potentially fatal health conditions such as stroke.
The potential benefits of acupuncture have recently been emphasised, by Dr Holly Middlekauff, a researcher at the Los Angeles School of Medicine:
“There is an ever-increasing interest in alternative medicine. But until now, no one had looked at acupuncture’s effect on the very sickest heart failure patients. Our research represents a promising first step, but more study is definitely needed.”
In her study, Dr Middlekauff conducted research that segmented 14 critically ill heart failure patients into three groups, with one group receiving acupuncture treatments in conventional facilities. The second group received treatments that involved needles being positioned in places that are not normally associated with acupuncture and the third received treatment with no needles. Following this, blood-pressure and sympathetic nerve activity were measured in all participants, and nerve activity was dramatically reduced for the patients that had received conventional acupuncture.
Dr Middlekauff has asserted that more detailed research needs to be conducted before definitive conclusions can be produced, but is confident that acupuncture has the potential to be included into heart-disease treatment routines throughout the medical community in near future.
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