Acupuncture may Help Menopausal Women with Hot Flashes

by | Apr 5, 2016 | 2012, Menopause, Women's Health

Written by Greg Arnold, DC, CSCS.  While both traditional and sham acupuncture treatments reduced hot flash symptoms and severity in menopausal women, traditional acupuncture provided women with an 8% decrease in the stress hormone cortisol while women who had sham acupuncture experienced a 31.3% increase in cortisol.

For women progressing through menopause, one of the most uncomfortable symptoms which can affect quality of life are vasomotor symptoms (VMS), better known as “hot flashes”. They are experienced by 68-82% of women transitioning through menopause and is the primary reason that women use hormone therapy (1, 2). But with revelations from the Women’s Health Initiative showing increased risks of heart disease (3), broken bones (4), cancer (5, 6), and blood vessel problems (7) for those undergoing hormonal therapy and prescription medications also producing “undesirable side-effects” (8), there is a need for alternative treatments for women entering menopause.

One such alternative therapy may be acupuncture. A 2012 study (9) involved 33 women who were either near menopause (perimenopausal) or postmenopausal and with at least seven hot flashes daily. They were randomly divided into groups that received three treatments per week for 12 weeks of either traditional acupuncture, sham acupuncture, or no treatment at all (control group). The traditional acupuncture treatments stimulated 11 “front” points and 7 “back” points, with each needle 0.5 to 1.5 inches and manually stimulated to reach “de-qi” and then retained for 30 minutes. The sham acupuncture points were “proximate to the traditional acupuncture site but not considered active as they were “manipulated without skin penetration and secured with adhesive tape.”

Surprisingly, the sham treatments gave decreases in hot flash symptoms occurrence and severity which were almost identical to the traditional acupuncture treatment group. However, a significant difference was noted in the urine of those in the traditional acupuncture group. Specifically, those in the traditional acupuncture group had a 8.6% decrease in the stress hormone cortisol (40.8 to 37.3 nanograms/milliliter creatinine) compared to a 31.3% increase in the sham group (50.4 to 66.2 ng/mL creatinine) (p = 0.05), indicating that traditional acupuncture affects the hormone center in the brain called the “HPA Axis” which is known to produce more cortisol in women entering menopause (11).

For the researchers, “both the traditional and sham acupuncture interventions improved hot flashes and menopause-related quality of life compared to control” and that “Given the small sample size, these findings reported should be viewed as preliminary, hypothesis-generating and useful for the planning of a well-designed study including objective measures to determine the efficacy of acupuncture for hot flashes in peri- and postmenopausal women.”

Source: Painovich, Jeannette M., et al. “A pilot randomized, single blind, placebo-controlled trial of traditional acupuncture for vasomotor symptoms and mechanistic pathways of menopause.” Menopause (New York, NY) 19.1 (2012): 54.

Copyright © 2011 The North American Menopause Society

Posted February 25, 2016.

Greg Arnold is a Chiropractic Physician practicing in Hauppauge, NY.  You can contact Dr. Arnold directly by emailing him at PitchingDoc@msn.com or visiting his web site at www.PitchingDoc.com.

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