If your wellness is affected by gouty arthritis, acupuncture is an effective treatment. This is according to a new meta-analysis of ten studies, covering over 850 test subjects, which revealed that acupuncture helped to improve patients’ wellbeing by reducing their uric acid levels, an important factor in gouty arthritis. The study also showed that acupuncture led patients to demonstrate clinical improvements by means of the visual analogue scale.
Using acupuncture for arthritis treatment is nothing new. For centuries, the needle-based therapy has been documented to treat several forms of arthritis, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and gouty arthritis. However, the Western perception of acupuncture still remains sceptical, and so the researchers decided to investigate the measurable effects of acupuncture on uric acid levels.
So why is the measurement of your uric acid levels a good indication that a therapy has worked? Gouty arthritis is defined as elevated levels of uric acid in the blood, which affects your wellness by crystallising the blood in your tendons, joints and sinew. Your body gives a powerful, and often painful, inflammatory response and your big toe is often affected at the metatarsal-phalangeal joint. Gouty arthritis is currently treated with medications such as steroids, colchicine and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). However, the new research indicates that acupuncture can be an effective complementary modality to these biomedical treatments.
However, there is also something you can do at home to improve your gouty arthritis. Biomedicine physicians and Chinese medicine licensed acupuncturists alike recommend dietary modifications to reduce the effects of gouty arthritis inflammatory episodes. Over 10% of these attacks have dietary causes, as specific foods tend to trigger this type of gout, especially those with high levels of purine. This includes foods such as organ meats, sardines, anchovies, mackerel, liver, scallops, mussels, herring and yeast, but alcohol and fructose sweetened foods are also associated with the triggering of gout.
The new study is not the first to assert that acupuncture can improve gouty arthritis, but rather it is complemented by additional research which demonstrated that electro-acupuncture reduces the inflammation and damage to joint cartilage, which are symptoms associated with arthritis. Confirmed with X-ray imaging, the second study showed that the application of electro-acupuncture reduced articular joint degeneration, and preserved cartilage in the joint.
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