Can Acupuncture Treatment Help Control Chemotherapy’s Debilitating Side-Effects?
This is an interesting question since most of the cancer patients who are receiving Chemotherapy are suffering from its side-effects like vomiting and nausea. As we all know that acupuncture is an ancient technique that dates back from the the 1st millennium BC where it is use to relieve pain or for therapeutic purposes by inserting needles into the specific points of the body.
Today it is mastered and championed by practitioners, doctor and patient as an effective technique to achieve a balanced diet. It helps restore balance and a healthy energy flow within the body, according to the theory of Chinese medicine, acupuncture. But still many experts and scientists don’t fully understand why acupuncture works.
There are also studies indicating that there are many medical benefits that acupuncture provides in the medical field. One of this study is the reduction of the side-effects of chemotherapy that is vomiting and nausea. Chemotherapy is a conventional cancer treatment that helps fight cancer recurrences and eliminate cancer cells. In chemotherapy, chemicals are administered to the body of a cancer patient to treat and kill malignant cells or cancer cells. Chemotherapy is most of the successful in eradicating the malignant cells, but it also produce a side-effect to cancer patient. This side-effect is the chemotherapy-induced nausea or vomiting.
Experts are finding ways to control the side-effects of chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. There are many patients who are receiving chemotherapy are still suffering from these side-effects. The vomiting can be controlled but still nausea persists. These side-effects is an unbearable experience to the patients thus sometimes leads to refusal to further courses of chemotherapy. So if a patient will not continue his/her courses of chemotherapy, this will give the patient a slim chance of treatting the malignant cells or cancer cells.
since then experts have discovered that acupuncture can help reduce the side-effects of chemotherapy. There is a review published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that certain types of acupuncture-point stimulation may relieve chemotherapy-induced nausea or vomiting. The acupuncture-point is located on the wrist is this called P6. This acupuncture-point thought to be associated with relief of nausea. The acupuncture-point can stimulated in different acupuncture methods such as the manual acupuncture (insertion of needles), electro-acupuncture (passing electric current through the inserted needle), non-invasive electro-stimulation (application of electric current without a needle), or acupressure (pressure applied by the fingers or an elastic wristband).
It was been found out that patients that receive high-dose chemotherapy experience less side-effects when treated with the combination of electro-acupuncture and anti-nausea medication. In this combination of treatment, it is very effective in controlling chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. In the study, patients who received electro-acupuncture suffered less chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting than those who don’t receive any needling.
Nowadays, acupuncture treatment is now being provided in cancer centers because this kind of treatment is very effective in to patients who are dealing with pain, nausea, vomiting and treatment of mucositis.
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