How Acupuncture Can Stop Menopausal Hot Flashes: Two Studies
Woman in Menopause
Last week, I went over how acupuncture can actually help relieve the symptoms of hot flashes—one of the most common complaints of postmenopausal women. This week, I’ll talk about how acupuncture has been shown to specifically lower the intensity of hot flashes in women with cancer.
Study #1: Acupuncture treats hot flashes in breast cancer patients
In a randomized, controlled trial conducted by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers recruited 72 women with breast cancer who experienced three or more hot flashes per day. They were randomly given either sham acupuncture or real acupuncture as a treatment twice a week for four weeks.
Progress was measured at the start of the trial, at six weeks, and at six months. Patients who received sham acupuncture until week six were assigned real acupuncture starting on week seven.
The results weren’t conclusive, but they were consistent. Patients who received real acupuncture had, on average, nearly one less hot flash per day than the patients who received sham treatments. And patients who received sham treatments showed signs of improvement after receiving real acupuncture. The benefits of acupuncture lasted for six months after treatment.
Study #2: Acupuncture outperforms Gabapentin
In an even more elaborate study published in The Journal of Cancer Research, 120 patients were randomly assigned either electro-acupunture (EA), sham acupuncture (SA), gabapentin (a common medication for hot flashes), or a placebo pill.
The women who participated in the trial had breast cancer and two or more hot flashes each day. Treatment was administered over eight weeks. Progress was measured at the start of the trial, at week eight, and at week 24 after treatment.
In this study, the results were conclusive. The group that received EA had the fewest hot flashes, followed by the group that received SA, gabapentin, and placebo respectively. Even sham acupuncture had better results than gabapentin, a standard medication. In fact, the group that received gabapentin reported the most adverse side effects.
Additionally, at week 24, the groups that had received gabapentin or placebo were back to where they started: their hot flashes returned with a vengeance. But the groups that received EA or SA continued to experience fewer hot flashes one month after treatment had ended.
Even though researchers don’t quite understand how it works, the results are clear: acupuncture effectively reduces the intensity of hot flashes in women with breast cancer.
