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Traditional acupuncture best for high blood pressure |
| Posted on Jul 25 2010 at 1:34 PM |
| News / Blog >> Acupuncture |
Korean authors have carried out a systematic review of acupuncture for the treatment of essential hypertension. Twenty trials were included, of which only three were considered relatively rigorous. Acupuncture achieved significant effect modification on blood pressure compared with controls.
In the high quality trials, blood pressure was significantly lower with acupuncture plus antihypertensive drugs than with sham-acupuncture plus hypertensive drugs. Trials that used acupuncture prescriptions based on TCM syndrome differentiation (i.e. traditional Chinese acupuncture) showed significant blood pressure reduction in comparison to controls. In contrast, in the trials that did not use TCM acupuncture prescriptions the authors found no significant reduction in blood pressure with acupuncture compared to controls.
(Acupuncture for essential hypertension. Altern ther Health Med. 2010 Mar-Apr;16(2):18-29).
This fits with my belief that often when trials show no effect for acupuncture, it is because they have used modern point prescriptions, rather than traditional Chinese Syndrome differentiation to choose points.
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