Acupuncture may offer
women an alternative for easing hot flashes
during menopause, preliminary research suggests.
In
a study of 29 women with frequent, daily hot
flashes, researchers found that those who
received acupuncture began to have fewer and
less severe symptoms during the night.
As
nighttime hot flashes improved, so did the
quality of the women's sleep, the researchers
report in the journal Fertility & Sterility.
Hot flashes are a common part of menopause,
and women who get them often have difficulty
getting a good night's sleep. Hormone replacement
therapy is effective at quelling hot flashes,
but given the risks of the therapy including
increased risks of heart disease and breast
cancer many women are interested in alternative
treatments.
The
new findings offer preliminary evidence that
acupuncture works, but it's too early to recommend
the procedure for hot flashes, senior study
author Dr. Rachel Manber stated.
Large
replication studies are necessary before we
move from bench to bed,' said Manber, an
associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford
University School of Medicine in California.
Recent
medical research has found that acupuncture
may work by altering signals among nerve cells
or by affecting the release of various chemicals
of the central nervous system. There's also
some evidence that acupuncture affects hormones
related to both sleep and menopause.
However,
for now, the mechanism by which acupuncture
might affect hot flashes is not completely
understood, Manber said.
For their study, she and her colleagues randomly
assigned 29 women to receive seven weeks of
acupuncture or a sham' version of the procedure.
In the latter case, acupuncturists used flat-tipped
needles that did not pierce the skin, placing
them on areas of the skin not considered to
be acupuncture points. The patients could not
see that the needles weren't piercing their
skin.
By
the end of treatment, women who'd been getting
the real acupuncture sessions reported a greater
reduction in the severity of their nighttime
hot flashes than those in the comparison group.
Both
groups said their hot flashes had become less
frequent, the researchers found, and as hot
flash symptoms improved, so did the women's
sleep quality.
The
sleep improvements were seen in both groups,
and acupuncture itself did not seem to have
a special effect on sleep. However, Manber
pointed out, the acupuncture points used in
the study were chosen because they target
hot flash symptoms, according to traditional
medicine. So the therapy was not designed
to directly address sleep problems, she said.
