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© Louise Hughes 2009
Traditional Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs
People who use acupuncture often say that it helps them feel relaxed and improves
their overall feeling of wellbeing. One of the main reasons people with cancer use
acupuncture is to help relieve sickness (nausea) caused by chemotherapy. Acupuncture
is widely used in hospitals, hospices and clinics to relieve pain. Some people like
to use it because it helps them to sleep better and feel generally more healthy.
It can reduce anxiety which can also help to reduce pain.
Some people use it to reduce
hot flushes caused by cancer or its treatment.
Many scientific studies have looked at the use of acupuncture. There is no evidence
to suggest that acupuncture helps in any way with treating, preventing or curing
cancer. But it can help to relieve symptoms of cancer and some of the side effects
of treatment.
The main areas of research are chemotherapy related sickness and cancer
pain. Most studies show acupuncture to be better than no treatment and as good as
or better than current standard treatment. A website called CAMEOL (Complementary
and Alternative Medicine Evidence Online) has published a review on acupuncture and
pain. There is not yet enough evidence to show for sure that acupuncture can relieve
cancer pain but many studies show it can reduce some types of pain. We need more
large scale research into the use of the different types of acupuncture for cancer
pain.
Both the World Health Organisation and the Cochrane Library have published reviews
on chemotherapy related sickness that found that acupuncture can help. The Cochrane
review found that acupuncture with needles can reduce vomiting on the day of treatment.
Electroacupuncture seemed to work best. Acupressure helped to reduce nausea (feeling
sick) on the day of treatment too. Acupressure just means pressing on an acupuncture
point. You can do that yourself quite easily – the point usually used is on the inside
of the wrist. You can also buy special wrist bands, called Seabands. These have a
plastic stud designed to press on the right acupressure point to reduce sickness.
There is more detail about this in our what is new in complementary therapy section.
Other
studies have looked at acupuncture for
- Breathlessness – there is some evidence to show that acupuncture can help
- Hot flushes for women with breast cancer and men with prostate cancer – small studies have shown that acupuncture can reduce hot flushes
- Cancer related tiredness – small trials have shown acupuncture can help
- A dry mouth after radiotherapy for head and neck cancer – a study has shown that acupuncture can reduce a dry mouth
Larger trials are needed to show how helpful acupuncture can be for these conditions.
But a lot of therapists report encouraging results.
The NHS specialist library for
complementary and alternative medicine website gives information about current research
into acupuncture. For any symptom where there is evidence that acupuncture may help,
we need to compare it with standard treatment to get an overall view of how it can
help alongside current conventional treatment options.
Some people think that acupuncture
may work because of a placebo effect. For example, the benefits might be due to the
attention of the therapist, being listened to, or just having the chance to lie down
and relax. To try and account for the placebo effect, some studies compare true acupuncture
with sham acupuncture. Sham acupuncture uses a special needle that does not actually
penetrate the skin. Some studies have shown that the real acupuncture worked better
than the sham acupuncture for some symptoms. For others, there was no difference.
Many scientific studies have looked at the use of acupuncture. There is no evidence
to suggest that acupuncture helps in any way with treating, preventing or curing
cancer. But it can help to relieve symptoms of cancer and some of the side effects
of treatment.
The main areas of research are
- Sickness and Nausea
- Cancer Pain
- Breathlessness
- Hot flushes
- Cancer related Tiredness
- Dry mouth
Chinese Herbal medicine is used by many people to treat many different health conditions.
As with most types of complementary or alternative therapies, people use it to make
themselves feel better or feel more in control of their situation.
Herbal medicine
is often promoted as a natural way to help you relax and cope with anxiety, depression
and other conditions such as eczema, hay fever, irritable bowel syndrome and menstrual
(period) problems.
Herbal medicine is one of the most commonly used complementary
and alternative therapies (CAM) by people with cancer. Some studies have shown that
as many as 6 out of every 10 people with cancer (60%) use herbal remedies alongside
conventional cancer treatments. There are many different types of herbal medicines
and some of them overlap with foods. Commonly used plants include echinacea, St John’s
Wort, green tea and ginger.
There is some evidence that particular herbal remedies may help to prevent or relieve
symptoms of cancer or treatment side effects. Researchers believe there may be others
that could help people with cancer. But we need more studies using these plants before
we will know for sure. There is no evidence to prove that herbal remedies can treat,
prevent or cure cancer in any way.
One Cochrane Review looked at using Chinese herbal
medicines to treat chemotherapy side effects in people with bowel cancer. Overall
the evidence was not strong enough to prove either benefit or harm. Several other
Cochrane Reviews are looking at using herbal medicines to treat symptoms or side
effects of lung, breast, bowel and stomach cancer and cancer of the food pipe (oesophagus).
Chinese Herbal Medicine
