Acupuncture May Be Beneficial For Hormonal Imbalance
Recently western medicine has been looking for and actively embracing alternative methods to help with disorders that cause hormonal imbalances in women. These are problems that have not been improved by medications and other traditional treatment. Physicians are concentrating on treatment such as acupuncture and herbal therapy on issues such as endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Recently such a clinical research study was done at the University of Virginia Health System. This study followed women who had acupuncture treatments. The study was designed to see if this treatment would improve symptoms related to polycystic ovarian syndrome. One of the main things they were looking for was whether acupuncture would help women to have regular periods and in turn increase their fertility.
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is a disorder that affects approximately 5% of all women. Symptoms of this disorder include having multiple cysts that appear on the ovaries, irregular menstrual cycles and irregular vaginal bleeding, problems with acne, and hair growth in patterns that resembles the hair grown of a male. Since menstrual cycles are affected by this disorder, fertility can be affected. This disorder can cause severe hormonal imbalances. Due to this, women with PCOS tend to have a much higher rate of miscarriages during their pregnancies. Women with PCOS have up to a 50% rate of miscarriage in the first trimester of pregnancy where the average female has a 15% rate of miscarriage.
As stated above, the clinical trial done at the University of Virginia was designed to see if acupuncture would help improve the symptoms of these women who suffer with PCOS. Lisa Pastore, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Virginia Health Systems, and the principal researcher for this study, stated that her goal concerning this treatment was to help these women regulate their hormonal imbalances. This in turn would allow them to have regular menstrual cycles. She hoped this would increase their chances of pregnancy. According to the article released by the University of Virginia Health Systems Medical News, several women who were in the study had reported pregnancies already. This made the researchers very hopeful for positive findings in the future. They do caution however that they have not had enough women enrolled in the study to produce results are credible in the eyes of the scientific community and not consider that the results could have been produced due to chance.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.