What Is Endometriosis And How Does Acupuncture Help With It?

As I have special interest in treating fertility issues, I see fair amount of patients that are trying to conceive either naturally or with help of IVF who suffer with endometriosis.

Some cases are mild but others are much more severe, where patients day-to-day life is affected by endometriosis not only fertility. So even if you are not trying to get pregnant but you are suffering with this condition, you can try acupuncture to help you with the symptoms.

A lot of patients are being given hormonal treatment from young age to help to ease of the symptoms or being offered surgery, unfortunately surgery most of the time will bring relief for short period of time.

I have done some research, to give you more information on what exactly is endometriosis and how can be treated with acupuncture.

Endometriosis is a chronic condition that is defined as the growth of endometrial tissue at sites across the uterus. This tissue can grow most commonly in pelvic cavities and then begin spreading to other parts of the body.

This tissue growth often responds to hormonal changes as a result of the menstrual cycle. When tissue has the chance to grow due to hormonal changes, this can lead to subsequent bleeding, pain and inflammation. If the ovaries are eventually affected by the condition, this can lead to symptoms like ovarian cysts and ongoing abdominal pain.

The early symptoms of endometriosis are often of little concern, but in roughly a third of women that this condition affects, it can grow to a more serious issue that can affect overall health and lead to serious complications with fertility.

Most of the time, endometriosis is a condition that is treated with hormone therapy. Many individuals choose not to use hormone drug therapy due to the way that it can affect overall health. A secondary option that has been made available for endometriosis is surgery like, Laparoscopy, Laparotomy which is a major abdominal surgery as it can involve hysterectomy, ovaries and fallopian tubes might also be removed, this surgery dose not guarantee full recovery and endometriosis symptoms might come back in some patients.

Acupuncture for endometriosis

Researchers have discovered that acupuncture is a much more effective treatment than hormone drug therapy. Ongoing acupuncture treatment can work at reducing menstrual pain as well as the overall size of pelvic masses. The way that acupuncture works for the treatment of endometriosis is by lowering CA 125 levels. By lowering this biomarker it’s possible to reduce the risk for several types of cancer as well as conditions like endometriosis.

According to research done at Tongji University Hospital, patients that received acupuncture treatment instead of drug therapy, had 92% effective rate for recovery. Patients undergoing hormonal treatment were only able to receive a 52% effectiveness rate. Acupuncture also reduced the instances of pain more significantly than any medication and has no side effects.

As well as reducing pain, the recurrence rate for endometriosis was also significantly reduced. Acupuncture-based treatment reduces the recurrence rate to just 20% whereas drug therapy had a recurrence rate of nearly 36%.

Using traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture works at improving blood circulation and it can also dissolve blood stasis. By improving the function of the liver, spleen and kidneys it was shown that the condition of endometriosis could be heavily lessened as well as the instance of inflammation caused by the condition.

Ongoing treatment with acupuncture could help to reduce menstrual pain as well as the overall rates of endometriosis and women that could be at risk. As understanding in this study, scientists have gone on to consider just how much our organs are responsible for overall health of the development of these conditions.

With scientific verification that acupoints in treatment for endometriosis are more effective than hormonal treatments, TCM could soon be the main type of treatment that is utilised for treatment in endometriosis patients.

More studies will need to be completed to tell if acupuncture can outperform other types of drug therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5659600/