Home
 Services & Specialty
 Clinic Location
 Clinic Photos
 Faculty Member
 FAQ
 Insurance & Price
 Net Diagnosis
 
 
 
 Techniques of TCM
 Theory of TCM
 What is Acupuncture
 Acu. in the West
 US Regulation on TCM
 TCM Edu. in the China
 Modern Research
   Scientific Theory
   Offical Review
   Drug Addiction
   Obessive-Compulsive D.
   Infertility  
   Urine Disorder
   Back Pain
   Asthma
 

Acupuncture and asthma

What can we do for asthma patients in Scientific Acupuncture Center?

In Scientific Acupuncture Center, we have already successfully helped thousands of asthma patients, many of them even got cured. Now, we are a well known Chinese medical center with the reputation of specializing in the treatment of asthma in San Francisco bay area. For asthma patients, we use both acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Usually after 1~3 times treatments, patients' symptoms will greatly decreased.


Acupuncture has traditionally been successfully employed in China to treat most illnesses and research in the past decade has shown that acupuncture can be very effective for respiratory diseases including asthma. There are many studies relating to the success of acupuncture treatment for asthma which have been reported in the medical journals . In 1979 the World health Organization listed 40 diseases for which acupuncture was considered to be beneficial and diseases of the respiratory tract including asthma and bronchitis were included in that list. 

Dr Mike Whiteside in one report stated that: "This (Acupuncture) is excellent for a mild attack and remarkably well accepted even by children."  This view is certainly supported through the international medical literature and the published controlled studies.

In a study conducted in the University Hospital of Vienna revealed that over 70% of patients with long-standing asthma reported a significant improvement of their ailments after ten weeks of acupuncture treatment.

Please remember that traditional acupuncturists treat the whole person rather than a disease and therefore attempt to get to the root cause of the problem rather than treating the symptoms and, like other holistic practitioners, will consider all lifestyle and environmental factors before commencing treatment.

Scientists at the Department of Acupuncture, Second Municipal People's Hospital, Kaifeng City, Henan Province studied 192 patients suffering from bronchial asthma , all of whom were treated by acupuncture on Kongzui (Lu 6) and Yuji (Lu 10). The results revealed that there was an immediate total effective rate of 98.9%, and interestingly, the rate of clinical remission dropped and there was a marked improvement in 76.5% of the patients.

The efficacy of the treatment did not differ significantly in patients of varying ages and even the duration of the disease was not found to be significant. The effects for asthma patients of the cold type according to Traditional Chinese Medicine classification and of the allergic type according to western medicine were the most impressive, and the researchers also found that the long-term curative rate was linked to (a) the length of time of needle retention and (b) the speed with which a patient responded to treatment. (ie. those patients who received the most needling and those who responded fastest to the treatment experienced a better long-term curative rate.)

The study also found that 40 minutes of needle retention after the treatment took effect was the most desirable. Acupuncture treatment of bronchial asthma was considered very effective, and particularly useful for those patients who have a history of drug allergy. The clinical observation revealed that the asthmatic symptoms in most of the patients began to be improved after several acupuncture treatments with the dosage of the drug gradually reduced.

Generally, the dose of cortisone per oz was decreased by 2 mg every 10 days, while that of aerosol was controlled by the patients themselves according to the condition of the disease.

The symptoms in most of the patients were markedly improved after 15 treatments, but the treatment should be continued for another 10 times to consolidate the curative effect. Thus, each asthmatic patient needs to receive approximately 30 sessions of acupuncture treatment, lasting about 3 months. Thereafter, in order to prevent its relapse, the treatment should be administered 10 times each year in the summer season. It is worthy to be mentioned that, in this series, there was a female patient who suffered from anaphylactic asthma induced by dog's hair. She received 10 sessions of acupuncture treatment with no improvement. In this case, the acupuncture treatment should not be given any longer. There were another two children patients aged 5 and 7 years respectively, for them the above method of acupuncture treatment was difficult to be used. Therefore, the auricular pressing method combined with cupping was adopted instead. The auricular points selected were Shenmen, Lung, Large Intestine, sensitive point, Pingchuan, Subcortex, and Kidney. 5 points were used each time, and pressed with the seeds of Vaccaria which were changed every 3 days. The patients were asked to press each of the points themselves 3 times a day (each time by 20 pressings). And Dazhui (Du 14), Feishu (UB 13), Pishu (UB 20) and Shenshu (UB 23) were cupped for 5 min. each time. The auricular pressing and cupping therapies may also be added for adult patients to strengthen the curative effect. The 25 cases of hormone dependent bronchial asthma were treated by acupuncture, yielding a markedly effective rate of 56% with a total effective rate of 96%, indicating that good therapeutic results can also be expected in the western countries for those cases who have already been treated with hormones.

 

 

Scientific Acupuncture Clinic Center , 1999