Hypertension and acupuncture -
It typically relates to risk factors such as genetics, age, and lifestyle. Secondary hypertension happens because of an underlying cause, such as certain health conditions and medications.
Blood pressure measurements involve two numbers:. A systolic blood pressure reading of mm Hg or higher and a diastolic reading of 80 mm Hg or higher could point to hypertension, according to guidelines from the American College of Cardiology.
Acupuncture may help you manage primary hypertension, especially if it helps minimize the impact of risk factors such as age and stress. One study involved women who had gone through menopause. According to the results, acupuncture appeared to significantly lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure for the women who received acupuncture.
Chronic stress can also increase your chances of developing primary hypertension — and according to research , acupuncture could help lower your stress levels over time. Still, acupuncture may help relieve symptoms of conditions that can cause secondary hypertension, including:.
One study included 22 pregnant women with preeclampsia , a condition that involves high blood pressure. Half the women received up to 10 acupuncture sessions over 2 weeks, while the other half received treatment as usual. Adding acupuncture to the usual treatments for preeclampsia lowered both systolic and diastolic blood pressure more than the usual treatments alone.
By the end of the study, participants who received acupuncture experienced significantly more improvement in their blood pressure than those who received treatment as usual. A case study even found acupuncture helped one woman keep her pregnancy after receiving a preeclampsia diagnosis at 27 weeks.
After 5 weeks of acupuncture and acupressure, she gave birth at week 34 to a baby with Apgar scores of 8 and 9 — in other words, a healthy newborn. Acupoints are the specific points where qi can flow from your organs to the surface of your body.
Meridians, or pathways, connect these external points to your internal organs. When it comes to hypertension, acupuncture may help regulate your blood pressure by acting on the hormones involved in the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system RAAS.
This system keeps up a level blood pressure and balances your fluids and electrolytes. In particular, acupuncture may change how the hormones and enzymes in your RAAS show up in your blood and stimulate receptors in your body that regulate blood pressure.
Research from suggests dopamine may lower oxidative stress — an excess of free radicals — and help keep your blood pressure balanced. According to older research , points often used to help lower blood pressure include:.
Your acupuncturist will most likely tailor your treatment around your specific needs after conducting a health study, so they may choose one or more of these points during your session. Acupressure , a related approach, involves stimulating acupoints by applying fingertip pressure rather than needles.
You can also try acupressure yourself once you learn the right points to stimulate. The taichong point is one of the most common acupoints for hypertension. To stimulate it through acupressure:. Even so, experts call into question the quality and rigor of many of these studies.
Acupuncture may certainly help lower blood pressure for many people. When performed by a board certified acupuncturist, acupuncture is generally safe for most people, with little risk of side effects. But for trained and licensed acupuncturists, this is standard practice. Improperly performed acupuncture could lead to infection or, in rare cases, serious side effects such as central nervous system injuries or punctured organs.
In the United States, the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine certifies acupuncturists. You can find a licensed acupuncturist in your area using their directory. Once you find a potential acupuncturist, make sure they hold a current license to practice acupuncture and feel free to ask any questions you have about the process.
While its effectiveness for lowering blood pressure in the long-term remains up for debate, smaller studies suggest acupuncture could temporarily help improve high blood pressure.
You can safely use acupuncture alongside most blood pressure medications , and this combo could do more to lower your blood pressure than medication alone.
Courtney Telloian is a writer with work published on Healthline, Psych Central, and Insider. Previously, she worked on the editorial teams of Psych Central and GoodTherapy. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available.
You can manage high blood pressure with more than medication. This article takes a look at seven home remedies for high blood pressure, including…. High blood pressure readings are different for adults, children, and pregnant women.
Learn which levels constitute high blood pressure for these…. In a study of older adults living in long-term care, researchers randomly assigned facilities to use either a potassium-rich salt substitute or….
A recent study has found that tai chi was more effective compared to aerobic exercise in lowering blood pressure among prehypertension patients. Portopulmonary hypertension is a progressive complication of high blood pressure in the veins that lead to your liver. Renal parenchymal disease is a group of conditions that can develop in the parts of your kidney that filter your urine and produce the hormone….
According to new research, adding salt at mealtime, using a salt shaker for example, is associated with an increased risk of developing kidney disease,. Baroreflex failure is a rare condition.
People with this condition experience sharply rising blood pressure during exercise, pain, and stress, and can…. New research examined the benefits and differences between three types of medications used to treat high blood pressure.
The published study demonstrated that acupuncture could normalize decreased parasympathetic nerve activity 5. This result indicates that the potential mechanism whereby acupuncture can lower BP may be related to the nervous system.
In the Web of Science, an international database, there were altogether studies on the application of acupuncture in the treatment of hypertension published until the end of February The most influential one is the randomized control trial RCT published in Circulation 6.
At the same time, there were some studies opposed to the application of acupuncture in the treatment of hypertension 7. Therefore, it is still controversial whether or not acupuncture therapy should be used in the clinical treatment of hypertension, hence comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the relevant evidence are still needed.
We have systematically collected the evidence of acupuncture for the treatment of hypertension and conducted a pooled analysis to assess the safety and efficacy of acupuncture therapy in the treatment of primary hypertension. A systematic search was conducted on PubMed, Embase, CENTRAL, CBM, CNKI and Wan-fang Data Database from the inception to February We did not apply any language restrictions.
The detailed search strategy search strategy for PubMed is listed in Table S1. EndNote X 8. Two reviewers X Tan, Y Pan screened all the trials for inclusion and conducted the data extraction. An electronic form was established using Excel for data extraction.
The main extract content included research topic, author, year of publication, specific information of the treatment groups and control groups, and outcome index. In case of a dispute, adjudication would be done by the third person. In the case of any disagreement between the 2 reviewers, a final decision was made by the third reviewer H Chen.
Two reviewers W Su, S Gong assessed the risk of bias of the included RCTs using the Cochrane Collaboration tool for assessing risk of bias 8. Disagreements were resolved in consultation with the third reviewer H Chen. As the length of the course of treatment is a clinically relevant factor for the antihypertensive effect, we synthesized the effects based on different course lengths.
According to clinical settings, we divided the course treatment lengths into categories, immediacy within 1 day , short-term one day to 4 weeks , and long-term over 4 weeks. All analysis was conducted using Stata For the continuous outcomes, weighted mean difference WMD was calculated to pool the effects and odds ratios OR for the dichotomous outcomes.
First, a pair-wise meta-analysis was conducted using the DerSimonian and Laird method. Second, a network meta-analysis was processed using the mvmeta package of Stata software. The REML Wald test was used to assess the evidence of inconsistency Funnel plots were conducted to assess the small sample size.
In total, 1, pieces of literature were included via the original search, and pieces were excluded due to duplication. After screening for title and abstract, pieces of literature that failed the inclusion criteria were deleted, and after reading the whole text, 98 pieces of studies were removed.
Finally, 12 studies 6 , 12 - 22 published before and 19 ones 23 - 41 after were included Figure 1. Among the 31 pieces of literature, there were 5 pieces of literature in English 6 , 20 , 28 , 30 , 34 , and 26 in Chinese. The earliest publication was in 16 , and the latest was in Four studies 27 , 37 , 39 , 41 were three-arm trials, and 27 were two-arm trials.
Altogether, 2, patients were included in the 31 studies. The outcomes of the included studies were mainly the post-treatment BP value, the response rate of the treatment, and the adverse effects. The characteristics of the included studies are shown in Table 1.
Based on the risk of bias tool, most of the included studies were rated as high risk. Only 4 studies 6 , 16 , 28 , 30 described the detail method of allocation concealment. None of the included studies mentioned the method of blinding. As the protocol of the trials are lacking, it is difficult to assess the attrition bias and the reporting bias Table 2.
None of the included studies evaluated MACE as a primary outcome. Therefore, the pooled-analysis for MACE was not conducted in this review. Two studies 15 , 16 with cases of participants reported an immediate pre-post treatment BP change value.
As shown in Figure 2 , acupuncture seemed to have a better effect on SBP reduction than CCB at 3, 6, and 60 mins after treatment, while there was no significant difference between acupuncture and CCB at 9, 12, 15, and 30 mins.
What is more, CCB may gain much more SBP reduction than acupuncture at mins after treatment Figure 2A. These two studies also reported a DBP reduction in acupuncture and CCB.
The results showed that there was no significant difference between acupuncture and CCB at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 30, and 60 mins after treatment, while CCB may have a better effect on DBP reduction at mins after treatment Figure 2B.
Fifteen studies 12 - 14 , 18 , 21 - 25 , 31 , 32 , 35 , 38 - 40 involving 1, cases of participants reported pre-post treatment BP change value after 11 types of short-term treatment Figure 3. One study 35 which focused on two types of treatments did not form a connected loop with the other therapies.
Furthermore, the results showed that acupuncture combined with medication may have more SBP reduction than medication alone Figure S1 , while there was no significant difference between combined therapies and monotherapies on DBP reduction Figure S2.
Eleven studies 6 , 17 , 19 , 20 , 26 , 28 - 30 , 34 , 37 , 41 with participants reported a pre-post treatment BP change value after 10 types of long-term treatment Figure 3B.
The study compared CCB with acupuncture combined with CCB 29 , but it did not form a connected loop with the other 8 types of treatments. The pooled results showed that acupuncture might gain more reduction both on SBP and DBP than sham acupuncture and no-treatment, while there was no significant difference between acupuncture and other monotherapies on BP reduction Figures S3,S4.
Only one study 15 that compared acupuncture with nifedipine reported the response rate of treatment. It showed that there was no significant difference between acupuncture and nifedipine 30 min after treatment, while a significantly higher response rate was observed in the acupuncture group at 60 min after treatment, and an extremely lower rate in the acupuncture group at mins after treatment Figure 4.
Fifteen articles 12 - 14 , 18 , 22 - 25 , 31 - 33 , 35 , 36 , 39 , 40 comprising 1, cases of participants reported a short-term response rate for the treatment. Twelve types of treatments are worth noting Figure 5. One study 35 , which did not form a loop with the other therapies, reported acupuncture combined with life modification compared with life modification alone.
The pooled results showed that acupuncture seemed to have a higher response rate than β-blockers, and there seemed to be no significant statistical differences between acupuncture and other treatments.
The results also demonstrated that combined therapies might have a better effect than monotherapies Figure S5. Three articles 21 , 27 , 38 that involved participants reported a long-term response rate of treatment.
Six types of interventions were focused on in these three articles, and four types formed a connected loop Figure 5B. The pooled results showed that there was no significant difference between the four treatments Figure 6.
A new study suggests Hypergension a form of Hypertsnsion may Hypertenssion patients with high blood pressure Acupunctuer lower their risk of stroke and heart disease. The single-blind trial, Hypertension and acupuncture at xnd University Red pepper coleslaw California-Irvine UCIis the first scientific confirmation that acuupncture ancient Chinese medical technique is Nutritional Strategies for Recovery for patients with mild to acupunctufe hypertension. In the journal Medical Acupuncturethe team describes finding how electroacupuncture can lower blood pressure for up to 6 weeks in patients with hypertension. Electroacupuncture is a form of acupuncture that applies low-intensity electrical pulses through needles inserted at specific points on the body. The researchers say their findings suggest that with regular use, electroacupuncture could help people manage their blood pressure and reduce their risk of heart disease and stroke in the longer term. Senior author John Longhurst, a cardiologist and UCI professor of medicine, says the clinical study comes after nearly 10 years of bench research into the effect of acupuncture on high blood pressure. If you Hypertension and acupuncture with high blood pressure Muscle preservation and functional fitness, a healthcare team might recommend addressing Hypdrtension symptoms with lifestyle changes and, in Hgpertension cases, medication. But acupuncture, Hypertenion healing technique rooted acupuncthre traditional Chinese medicine TCM acuphncture, Hypertension and acupuncture also benefit you as part of your treatment plan. Acupuncture has helped people address various health concerns for roughly 3, years. This practice involves placing very fine, flexible needles into specific spots on your body, called acupoints, to stimulate healing. Modern acupuncture also includes electroacupuncturewhich channels an electric current between acupuncture needles. Existing evidence exploring the benefits of acupuncture for hypertension remains fairly mixed. Some research shows promise, but other studies have found it difficult to eliminate bias and come up with consistent results.
0 thoughts on “Hypertension and acupuncture”