Acupuncture and Pregnancy: Scientific evidence - Benefits - Ebook- Tools

Being pregnant is definitely a thrilling and fantastic time. On the other hand, with all the bodily and hormonal modifications that take place, it may also be a time of soreness. Several expecting females endure fatigue, nausea, backache along with other problems which are regarded as a "normal" component of being pregnant. Acupuncture is a safe, mild and successful method to tackle these ailments, particularly given that Western medicines cannot be utilized throughout this time.

# Using Acupuncture During And To Promote Pregnancy

Normal acupuncture in the course of being pregnant sets the basis for a wholesome mom and child. Furthermore, ladies who utulize acupuncture through pregnancy typically experience a less difficult pregnancy than females who do not use acupuncture. Research done in Europe concluded that "women of all ages who obtained acupuncture every week through the final month of being pregnant had considerably shorter labor than ladies who didn't acquire any acupuncture."

A few of the ailments that acupuncture can deal with are:

• Nausea, Vomiting, 
• Insomnia 
• Decreased Energy Levels 
• Anemia 
• Anxiety/depression 
• constipation 
• Carpal tunnel syndrome 
• Substantial blood stress (pre-eclampsia) 
• PUPPs & other pregnancy-related skin problems 
• Pre-term labor 
• Delayed labor 
• Labor discomfort 
• Lactation complications 
• Postpartum depression

Prenatal acupuncture has been employed for thousands of years to help sufferers ease into and through pregnancy, and to have an uncomplicated delivery. An Australian study conducted by Adelaide University in 2002 found that acupuncture throughout being pregnant had no adverse effects and was completely safe when provided by a trained acupuncturist.

You may well have heard that some acupuncture points are forbidden for the duration of being pregnant. This is true - certain points on the body are to be avoided for the duration of the pregnancy as they might stimulate uterine contractions. Nonetheless, a trained specialist in acupuncture will know specifically which points are unsafe to utilize during various treatments.

Acupuncture in the course of the first trimester focuses on setting the basis for a wholesome, safe, and uncomplicated pregnancy. Therapies are provided to prevent miscarriage and to tackle any early problems, such as nausea and fatigue. For optimum results, the recommended frequency of acupuncture throughout the first trimester is once per week.

Acupuncture throughout the second trimester aims to maintain balance and offer relief from numerous problems and ailments that arise during this time. The recommended frequency of therapies for that second trimester is evaluated for each individual. Sufferers may possibly come one to two times per month if the pregnancy is uncomplicated and there are no complaints. If addressing a certain issue, sufferers may perhaps need to come more often.

Acupuncture in the course of the third trimester prepares the body for labor and delivery. Treatment for labor induction can and should be offered anytime after the thirty-ninth week if there are no complications present. For the duration of the third trimester, sufferers are encouraged to seek weekly treatment to ensure a smooth labor and delivery. Research show that women of all ages who acquire normal acupuncture in the course of the third trimester generally have smaller and more productive labor.

In most cases postpartum acupuncture is continued in order to return the body to a state of organic balance and optimal health. Not many mothers in this day and age have the luxury of retiring to the bedroom for months after the pregnancy to heal and rejuvenate, because of this acupuncture is a great method to help stimulate growth and speed up the healing process.

Ebook and audio application for acupuncture and acupressure: ebook acupuncture and app

What are the benefits of acupuncture in pregnancy?

Acupuncture and phytotherapy help pregnant women get through their pregnancy more easily, but especially they help fetus develop harmoniously by revigorating mother's body and metabolism and by improving her immune functions. They also treat pregnancy-related complications, such as: risk of miscarriage, gestational diabetes, toxemia of pregnancy, preecclampsia, respiratory viroses, urinary infections, iron-deficiency anemia, etc. There are no side effects or contraindications; the acupuncturist will merely avoid to stimulate certain acupoints.

It Cleanses and Detoxifies the Body

One of the benefits that may be derived from traditional therapies during pregnancy is cleansing and detoxification of the body. In its life, the human body accumulates cell residues (deposits of dead cells and toxins) in its tissues, a process impairing the organic activity and causing fatigue, immune deficiencies, metabolic disorders, etc. Acupuncture and phytotherapy improve mother's health by eliminating these deposits; thus, they make it possible for a fetus to develop in a clean healthy body.

It Reinvigorates the Body and It Improves Mother's Immunity

Hormonal changes and adjustment of the body to pregnancy cause general fatigue. Very many pregnant women hardly cope with their daily activities, especially if they have to carry on with their professional activity during pregnancy. These states of asthenia are treated by a combination of acupuncture sessions with reinvigorating effects and certain medicinal herbs with tonifying and revitalizing effects that improve the activity of the central nervous system and of the muscular system. At the same time, they improve the immune functions and protect the body against the action of the pathogen agents from the environment: viruses, bacteria, sun radiations, toxins and pollution.

It Ameliorates Pains and Sickness

In medical practice, acupuncture is often employed to relieve pains. Activation of certain acupoints stimulates the endorphin secretion, a neurotransmitter with strong analgesic action. In combination with certain herbs, the effects of the endorphins are directed to make human psychic relax and to soothe the pains in the backbone or in other areas of the body. Sickness sensations are reduced by equilibrating the energy centres that coordinate the activity of the digestive system.

It Treats Depression and Anxiety

As they tonify the nervous system, normalize the endocrine activity, equilibrate the psychic life and revitalize the body, acupuncture and phytotherapy fight depression and anxiety. The treatment also helps prevent post-partum depression, a disorder that occurs on the background of the hormonal changes in the body and of the body's exhaustion following child delivery. The acupuncturist will also accelerate secretion of serotonin (the hormone of happiness), a neurotransmitter involved in the activity of the central nervous system, which plays a major part in maintaining the psycho-affective balance and in preventing depression and anxiety.

It Regulates Blood Pressure

The hormonal changes trigger blood pressure disorders. Therefore, during pregnancy, there may occur suffocation sensations, palpitations, arrhythmias and a raised blood pressure. Stabilization of blood pressure will prevent preecclampsia.

It Fights Migraines and Effects of Stress

Stress has a harmful effect upon the body, impairing mother's and fetus' organic activity, disrupting the metabolic changes, darkening the cognitive activities and overworking the nervous system. Together with the hormonal changes, these physiological processes frequently cause migraines during pregnancy. They may be treated by normalizing the oxygenation and the cerebral, organic and tissular vascularisation as well as by increasing the serotonin production (neurotransmitter that also coordinates dilation of capillaries and permeability of the small vessels).

It Prevents and Treats Edemas. It Controls Body Weight

In the last months of pregnancy, suddenly or within one or two weeks appears the edema - a painless swelling, caused by accumulation of serous liquid in organs and tissues. In most of the cases it appears in the lower limbs or in the hands. Adipose tissue deposits are a frequent characteristic with pregnancy manifestations. Depending on food regimes, hydration, physical activity and health condition, a woman will gain more or less kilograms. Edema is prevented and treated by improving lymphatic drainage, metabolic processes and renal functions. In order to control body weight, we shall act at energy level upon the centres regulating appetite, assimilation of food and use of the alimentary nutrients in the body so that mother's body should assimilate the necessary amount of nutrients from food in the most efficient way possible.

In Post-Partum Period, It Helps Mother Recover

Acupuncture and phytotherapy speed up the processes of tissular and organic regeneration; they also make possible a quicker post-partum recovery, both in the case of natural births and in the case of caesarian section. There have also been very good results in lactation stimulation, mastitis prevention, diminishing the flow of post-partum metrorrhages; in stabilizing the hormonal secretions and normalization of menstruation.

Learn more: Relax and Rejuvenate With Electric Back Massagers - Combined with mindfulness breathing

#What is the scientific evidence supporting the value of acupuncture during pregnancy?

1. SUMMARISING ACUPUNCTURE'S EVIDENCE 

Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, increasing at twice the rate of research into conventional biomedicine. Over this period, there have been over 13,000 studies conducted in 60 countries, including hundreds of meta-analyses summarizing the results of thousands of human and animal studies.1 A wide-variety of clinical areas have been studied, including pain, cancer, pregnancy, stroke, mood disorders, sleep disorders and inflammation, to name a few.

With nearly 1,000 systematic reviews of acupuncture, getting a sense of what the evidence shows can be a challenge. Fortunately, the entire literature base was summarized in 2010 by the Australian Department of Veteran Affairs. This review was updated in 2014 by the US Department of Veteran Affairs2 and then again in 2017 by John McDonald and Stephen Janz, the authors of the Acupuncture Evidence Project.3

“It is no longer possible to say that the effectiveness of acupuncture can be attributed to the placebo effect or that it is useful only for musculoskeletal pain.” Stephen Janz

The Acupuncture Evidence Project reviewed the effectiveness of acupuncture for 122 treatments over 14 clinical areas. They found some evidence of effect for 117 conditions. “Our study found evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture for 117 conditions, with stronger evidence for acupuncture’s effectiveness for some conditions than others. Acupuncture is considered safe in the hands of a well-trained practitioner and has been found to be cost-effective for some conditions. The quality and quantity of research into acupuncture’s effectiveness is increasing.” Acupuncture Evidence Project, p55

2. PUTTING ACUPUNCTURE IN CONTEXT: EVIDENCE FOR OTHER CONDITIONS

Acupuncture enjoys a high level of evidence for a variety of conditions. However, it can be challenging to understand the significance of this without comparison to the evidence for other commonly recommended treatments.

Looking at the evidence for currently recommended biomedical treatments, a recent review published in the proceedings of the Mayo Clinic in 2013 found that studies that examined the evidence for the standard of care (i.e. what doctors usually prescribe) recommended against current practice 46% of the time. In other words, from 2001-2010, for nearly half of the evaluated interventions, 146 in total, the recommendation to treat patients with these interventions was reversed. Another recent review also found that only about half of standard treatments were evidence-based: “An empirical evaluation of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found that the existing evidence base was unable to support or refute 49% of interventions, and 48% of American College of Cardiology recommendations were supported by expert opinion only.”6 In short, nearly half of all medical practices do not have positive evidence for their use and are not considered to fall into the category of ‘evidence based medicine.’

Related to treatments that lack evidence, the overuse of medical interventions, defined as, “the provision of medical services that are more likely to cause harm than good,” is also a global problem. “A more recent systematic review of global overuse categorized 83 overused or low-value services from studies including large sample sizes (more than 800 patients). These authors identified studies from four countries (with US studies predominating) and found that rates of overuse of various services ranged from about 1 to 80 percent.” These included treatments such as traction for patients with low back pain and testing such as tumour marking studies for patients with previous breast cancer.

With such high use of medical treatments that are more likely to harm than help, it becomes axiomatic that in many clinical situations, patients would be best served to start with safer treatments, such as acupuncture, when indicated.

While harms from appropriately administered treatments are prevalent, harms and deaths from medical error are rampant. According to a recent review published in the British Medical Journal, medical error is the 3rd most common cause of death in the U.S., with a quarter of a million deaths in 2013 alone.

3. ACUPUNCTURE HEAD TO HEAD

Using a review method known as a Network Meta-analysis, it is possible to evaluate various treatments for the same condition in a head to head analysis. Below are a few examples of how acupuncture compares to other treatments.

A 2013 network meta-analysis comparing physical treatments for osteoarthritis of the knee found that, when looking at high quality studies, acupuncture had the largest effect compared to usual care out of the conditions evaluated, out-performing exercise, sham acupuncture, and weight-loss.

A 2015 network meta-analysis comparing treatments in addition to exercise for shoulder impingement syndrome found that acupuncture was the most effective adjunctive treatment out of 17 interventions, outperforming all other adjuncts such as steroid injection, NSAIDs, and ultrasound therapy.10

A 2016 comparison of 20 treatments for sciatica ranked acupuncture as 2nd most effective after the use of biological agents, outperforming manipulation, epidurals, disc surgery, opioids, exercise, and an invasive procedure called radiofrequency denervation, which came in last

In 2018, a network-meta-analysis found that acupuncture was more effective than drugs for treating chronic constipation and with the fewest side-effects.

4. MEDICAL GUIDELINE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACUPUNCTURE

While acupuncture enjoys high-level clinical evidence for dozens of conditions, translating trial research into official medical guidelines can take time. However, a recent review examined clinical guideline recommendations from around the world made by a variety of groups including government health institutions, national guidelines, and medical specialty groups. Over a 27 year period, they found 2189 positive recommendations for acupuncture for 204 health problems, mainly in guidelines published in North America, Europe and Australasia.

These official recommendations indicate that acupuncture’s evidence is now acknowledged by medical experts and that acupuncture is no longer ‘alternative.’ Indeed, this new data illustrates that acupuncture is one of the most widely recommended treatments in modern medicine.

5. Acupuncture During Pregnancy

5.1. Historical evidence of Chinese medicine on acupuncture during pregnancy

Acupuncture is the ancient Chinese method of using tiny needles to stimulate specific areas or "meridians" of the body and to rebalance the body's energy, or chi. Because acupuncture is especially effective for chronic conditions, many pregnant women are turning to acupuncture to provide drug-free relief from many of the unpleasant symptoms of pregnancy.

An Australian study showed that women who received acupuncture treatments regularly before their 14th week of pregnancy had less nausea and shorter bouts of morning sickness than women who did not receive the treatment. Acupuncture has also been used to treat the more serious condition hyperemesis gravidarum, which causes serious vomiting that persists throughout pregnancy.

During the second trimester, acupuncture has been used to successfully treat heartburn and hemorrhoids. In the third trimester, acupuncture can provide relief from sciatica, joint pain and carpal tunnel syndrome, which many women develop late in pregnancy. Acupuncture has even been used to relieve pain during labor and delivery.

Pregnant women seeking to use acupuncture to treat conditions developed during pregnancy should be sure to visit a licensed and experienced acupuncturist. For example, although acupuncture can be used to treat edema, or swelling of the ankles, edema can be an indicator of a serious problem. An acupuncturist experienced in treating pregnant women would be more likely to recognize this problem and refer the patient back to her obstetrician.

The most serious risk of using acupuncture during pregnancy is that it may stimulate labor if it is improperly applied. Choosing an experienced practitioner reduces this risk to almost negligible levels. In fact, many women have turned to acupuncture to purposefully stimulate labor when their baby is overdue. Some women have found that labor induced by acupuncture is gentler than labor induced by drugs such as Pitocin.

In addition to benefits during pregnancy, labor and delivery, acupuncture has been used to promote fertility and to treat infertility. In a small German study, women who used acupuncture in conjunction with in vitro fertilization had a 42.5% success rate compared to 26.3% in women who used in vitro fertilization alone. Fertility specialists attribute this to the overall improvement of health that comes from receiving regular acupuncture treatments.

Finally, acupuncture may have some benefits in treating post-partum depression. Although no research has been done to support the efficacy of acupuncture treatments on post-partum depression, anecdotal evidence shows that some women do benefit from its use. Because acupuncture does not cause harmful drug interactions, it can be a useful complimentary therapy.

5.2. Guidance on pregnancy acupuncture: e-books and acupuncture tools

E-books

Documents about acupressure and acupuncture are quite cumbersome and complicated. It will take a long time to learn it. However I will share it for free.

Free guide to acupuncture and acupressure: Top 10 books for Acupressure and Acupuncture therapy - Free Download

They are in pdf format e-books. In my opinion, if there is a need to meet an acupuncturist, or download an application that can quickly apply acupuncture.

Ebook and audio application for acupuncture and acupressure: ebook acupuncture and app

Acupuncture tools

In the Types of Acupuncture Treatments: TCM and ElectroAcupuncture  - article, you will classify many different types of tools.

Here is an illustration of an acupuncture device:

      - by 4 Electrode Health Care Tens Acupuncture Electric Therapy

Walk around the market for acupuncture tools here: Acupuncture and Pregnancy - ElectroAcupuncture

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The Natural Synergy system treats strong pain and a multitude of common ailments at its root cause while accelerating the body’s healing response.

Eastern medicine states that the root of all health problems (physical, mental & emotional) can be traced back to energy blockages in our meridian system.

Energy blockages are a result of many external influences such as poor diet, un-natural irritants, chemicals and pollutants.

The meridian system is best described as a network of energy lines.  Each meridian line is dotted with energy points called ‘acupoints’.

Acupoints are like ‘natural reset buttons’ for blocked energy and can be stimulated in a number of ways.

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Acupuncture uses needles, Acupressure uses finger pressure, Electro-Acupuncture uses electricity, and Acu-Acoustic treatment uses Bio-frequencies.

Natural Synergy employs a combination of two Acu-therapies: Acupressure and Acu-Acoustics to extinguish strong pain while accelerating the healing process; much like Electro-Acupuncture but without the pain and discomfort of electric needles.

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You can expect fantastic results with either of these acu-therapies; acupressure or acu-acoustics by itself…

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