Pardon our French, but today’s blog post is all about the M-word: Menopause. While a completely normal experience for most women, menopause can sometimes feel like a disease accompanied by myriad undesirable symptoms. Menopause symptoms can vary greatly from person to person, several studies have shown that acupuncture may offer relief from some of the most common menopausal symptoms.
Menopausal Symptoms and Acupuncture Treatment
The most common menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats fall into a category called vasomotor symptoms (VMS). “Vasomotor” means that the symptoms are related to or caused by the constriction or dilation of blood vessels. These symptoms are experienced by approximately 70% of women in Western cultures. The most common treatment offered to women suffering from menopausal symptoms is hormone therapy, however that type of treatment doesn’t work for everyone. Fortunately, acupuncture has been shown to be an effective alternative therapy without use of pharmaceuticals.
The majority of studies on acupuncture for VMS reported 50% reductions in hot flashes that lasted for up to six months, significantly reducing hot flash frequency and severity. Acupuncture was also found to improve menopause-related psychological, somatic, and urogenital symptoms, leading to increased quality of life.
Another common menopausal complaint is insomnia. Combined with menopausal night sweats, sleeplessness can significantly negatively impact quality of life. Following acupuncture treatment, 75% of patients reported improvements in sleep complaints.
Cortisol levels tend to increase following menopause, contributing to changes in mood, metabolism, bone density, and cognitive decline. Acupuncture has been shown to influence cortisol, helping the body modulate stress response, and can be an effective treatment for related menopause symptoms.
How Does It Work?
Acupuncture works on the body through numerous different systems, but one of the most critical is it’s effect on purinergic signaling— which is a fancy way of describing cells talking to each other to regulate physiological functions. Purinergic signaling affects neurotransmission, neuromodulation, and secretion as well as essentially determining the entire life of each cell: what each cell’s job is, how it performs that job, and when it dies. Because of this important role, purinergic receptors are currently being considered as therapeutic targets for depression, anxiety, insomnia, and endocrine disorders as well as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.