2 Surprising Facts About How Acupuncture Can Help Menopause

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The shift into menopause can be smooth with less unwanted symptoms. To learn more about how we can help, give our office a call at (425) 686-4498 to schedule your initial consultation.

2 Surprising Facts About How Acupuncture Can Help Menopause

Are you frustrated with the random hot flashes that always seem to occur at inconvenient times?

Do you suffer from insomnia or poor sleep and wake with less energy than you went to bed with?

Going into menopause, unfortunately comes with some unpleasant side effects.

What exactly is menopause?

Menopause is medically defined as the absence of a period for 1 year. Up until that point, the changes are considered peri-menopause: a slowing down of the reproductive faculties of the body. The struggles mentioned above can begin during peri-menopause, as early as a women’s 40’s and can last into her late 50s. During this time, the ovaries start making less estrogen and progesterone (the hormones that regulate menstruation). These hormonal changes are the reason for the hot flashes that tend to be the main complaint of women approaching menopause. The hot flashes in turn can disrupt sleep, leading to further imbalances and mood swings. The hormones also affect the metabolism, which can lead to weight gain and body changes. Vaginal dryness is also related to the declining hormones.

How can acupuncture help menopausal symptoms?

In Traditional Chinese Medicine simplistic terms, these hormonal changes can be seen as a decline in yin, leading to a yin-yang imbalance. Yin refers to the cooling, calming, moisturizing influences of the body, and when deficient can lead to heat, dryness and nervousness or irritability. Acupuncture (and TCM lifestyle guidance) can help to re-calibrate the yin-yang balance to ease this transition. Read our previous post here on how Acupuncture can help regulate hormones.

What do the studies show?

In a recent study looking at how acupuncture can help perimenopausal insomnia. The study was over a 8 week period and showed that participants receiving acupuncture noted improvement in sleep scores, higher quality of life in vasomotor and other physical dimensions measured, and improvement in sleep quality. This study suggests that acupuncture is safe and effective for perimenopausal associated insomnia.

In a different study looking at how acupuncture affected vasomotor symptoms like hot flashes and night sweats showed that the group receiving acupuncture had a 36.7% reduction in symptoms of hot flashes, anxiety, sleep issues and memory loss. The improvements persisted at least 6 months after treatment.

Acupuncture has the power to rebalance the body’s energies when life transitions challenge our stability and is a great alternative or complementary therapy for any woman entering this new phase of life.