With the desire to avoid drugs and chemicals and the risk of side effects a natural treatment for acid reflux can become a more pleasant option for a lot of heartburn sufferers.
For this reason and a sudden and with a growing popularity in Chinese Medicine, a lot of individuals do wonder if acupuncture treatments do have sufficient proof for their effectiveness as an answer to acid reflux.
For acupuncturists, it is really difficult to tell if acupuncture will work for you. The only way to find out is to try it since this treatment reacts uniquely for each individual. Also, there may be different causes of acid reflux that acupuncture may or not be able to treat.
However, the past few years have seen a substantial interest in acupuncture by the medical community. One gastroenterologist from Taiwan, for example, just recently did a couple of experiments with acupuncture to observe this therapy’s effectiveness in the treatment of acid reflux. This study was published on the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology August 2005 issue.
The journal said that two experiments were done on the TLESRs or transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxations, which directly impacts acid reflux. A type of acupuncture called electrical acupoint stimulation was found to inhibit these TLESRs. The type of acupuncture procedure used is a high tech form of traditional acupuncture. The two experiments applied stimulation on the Neiguan acupuncture point located on the wrist and was barely felt.
The acupuncture procedure lessened by 40% the transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxations by 3.5/ hour from 6/hour. The result was likewise much higher than the group given sham or placebo treatment that had a mere 0.02 times/hour in lowered TLESRs.
Depending on your own unique constitution and condition, acupuncture may or may not work for you. You can get this treatment more than one time in order to be sure. You can also consider the traditional kind of acupuncture for your acid reflux problem. This is less expensive than electrical acupoint stimulation and is as effective. Furthermore, unlike electrical acupoint stimulation, traditional acupuncture is now usually covered in a lot of health insurance policies.
Acupuncture is a part of traditional Chinese medicine that has been dealing with acid reflux cases for thousands of years. Traditional acupuncture is still being used to address the symptoms of GERD including vomiting, nausea, burning and pain. Recent studies have revealed that acupuncture works by modifying the manner that nerve cells communicate to one another. This can affect the way the central nervous system releases certain chemicals in the body. These studies show that this therapy can truly positively affect the way the lower esophageal sphincter functions.
Even if most of the studies mentioned used electro-acupoint acupuncture, researchers state that needle stimulation acupuncture will work just as well in the treatment of acid reflux as electro-acupoint acupuncture since both apply stimulation to a certain acupoint.
One other option besides electric stimulation or traditional acupuncture to help treat acid reflux is acupressure. This technique merely uses manual pressure, specifically the thumbs and fingers, on certain acupuncture points. Anyone can perform this at home. For acid reflux, the acupuncture point that needs to be applied with pressure is the P6 point or Neiguan point on the wrist. The Neiguan point can be found between two tendons on the inside of the wrist.
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