And today I’ll talk on a very unique topic of menopause, on hot flashes, but in a very, I can say, different way, or I would like to highlight different points of how we treat and the potential of treatment of acupuncture.
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Hello everybody. I’m Dr. Yair Maimon, and I would like, first of all to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting up this presentation. And today I’ll talk on a very unique topic on of menopause, on hot flashes, but in a very, I can say, different way, or I would like to highlight different points of how we treat and the potential of treatment of acupuncture.
For menopause and especially for hot blood, hot flashes. So let’s put up the slides first. Menopause. It’s to do with transformation. Al always, it’s a time of changes for women. It’s a transformation. And when we talk in Chinese medicine of transformation, it’s always something to do within any yang.
It’s always rooted in this constant transformation of matter into energy and energy into matter. Or we’ll talk about transformation of. And let’s look a little bit about the uniqueness of the way in Chinese medicine, the uru, the womb is understood. If you look at chapter 47 and chapter 33 the simple questions, you’ll see that the UREs is connected on one side with the bowel Ma, with UREs vessel to the heart, and on the other side with the bowel duress channel to the kidneys.
So immediately the UREs is between two very specific organs, the heart and the kidneys. And as the heart and the kidneys will present the water and. Or again, if we go deeper, we can say Matter and energy. And the UREs is a place of creation and of birth between fire and water, or between earth and heaven.
And fire and heart are connected to the she to the spirit, and the kidneys are connected to the jing and the meaning of these two phenomenas, the meeting of Ian Yang are creating. New life, a new possibility of life. So Duru in this way is perceived in a very deep way of connecting heaven, an earth of connecting the heart and the kidneys, and It’s very much related to the earth in Chinese medicine, but also to this two organs which are heart and kidney.
And it means also when we are utilizing acupuncture points, and especially later when we look at some research on hot flashes. So there’ll be some points related to the heart. Like heart seven, the low point of the heart, peric heart seven. And if you look at the kidneys blood at 23, that tonifies the kidney, Kidney three, which is the again, the source points, the un point of the kidney.
So we see all this un points of the. Perricone heart and kidneys and splint six, which is more related to the earth where all the in channels are crossing, and again, has a very closed link to the lower jaw and to dure. So this actually took this points. It’s very common pins, but they’re also been used in research, which I would like later to present, but.
This is another way to show the logic of Chinese medicine, of connecting the fire and the water, the heart and the kidney, and enhancing the, and reducing also side effects of menopausal changes. So menopause, it’s always this movement of transformation of in and young. And we know the cycling woman of every seven years of the cycle in around 49 is the menopause time.
By the way, the premenopause starts much earlier. So many symptoms can be much earlier than the menopause itself. In this lecture, I’m not going to talk on the, about the natural kind of menopausal symptoms and occurrence of symptoms, but more on menopausal symptoms and especially hot flashes which are occurring due to anti hormonal medicine.
Anti hormonal medicine is given. To women who had cancer, and especially cancer, which is sensitive. There is receptors on the cancer cells themselves, which are sensitive to estrogen. And then the treatment is anti-estrogen treatment, especially in different cancers, either gynecological cancer in very common breast.
So endocrine therapy in western medicine applies this anti hormonal medicine, and because the tumors that are hormone related, the, if there is more presence of hormones in the body, there is more tumor growth. So this is the very common, as a saying, breast cancer and in several gynecological cancer.
There’s two major ways of an of endocrine treatment. One is to block the receptors on the cells themself to estrogen. The other one is to stop the production of estrogen. This is a very common treatments like tamoxifen. If you see on the cells, there’s the receptors for estrogen. And the tamoxifen mimic or has affinity in binds to the surface of the cell and therefore the estrogen cannot bind to it and therefore start the growth of especially mutated cancer cells.
So this is the kind of competition idea. It binds to the receptors in the cells, so the oxen and the other one is aromatase inhibitors. The estrogens in order to become estrogen, they’re going through different pathway of changes. One of them is the aromats and when DITs is inhibit, then there’s no production of estrogen.
There’s different ways to block the production of estrogen. This is the very common one with aromatase inhibitor. The bottom line is very similar, is producing in women who are taking anti hormonal medicine. Many side effects of menopause due to this medicines. There’s many common side effects for women who are receiving endocrine therapy.
I, I s. Put here the most common one, like fatigue, hot flashes is a big one. Mood swing, insomnia, sometimes even disturbance in concentration and depression. And there is a whole list of symptoms of menopausal symptoms, which are reduced by the endocrine therapy. This medicines are taken for long time, five years, sometimes for 10.
And many women stop almost 30% are stopping. Sometimes the treatment, even though it can be very useful for them because of the side effects, but acupuncture, Has been shown and there is evidence that it’s extremely effective treatment to reduce side effects, especially hot flashes and joint pain.
In this presentation, I want to talk a little bit about the evidence that we have for acupuncture, reducing the hot flashes, but also enhancing general better wellbeing in this woman. One of the early studies, but still I think one of the very Inspiring studies was head to head study. Women breast cancer women are taking anti hormonal medicine.
Were divided into group two groups. One was receiving acupuncture and the other one was receiving venlafaxine, which is like s nri. It’s really, it’s a light antidepressant drug, but it has also the it reduces also hot flashes, so it’s commonly used also for hot flash. And they measured the outcome.
They gave a certain 12 weeks of treatment. Then the treatment stops both the. Hormonal. They, I had avela vaccine, so both the medicine and the acupuncture was stopped after 12 weeks. After three months, the women didn’t receive any other treatment, and then they looked at the outcome even one year later.
And the acupuncture group did extremely well and the. Obviously you’ll see the Venlo vaccine. As you stop the, as the women stop the medicine the effect was quite immediately reduced and hot flashes were back. You’re welcome to read the full study. I’m just giving some highlights.
So as the results, you can see that both group exhibits significant decrease in hot flashes, depressive symptoms, and other quality of life symptoms. But in the acupuncture group it was the same for the acupuncture in the Vela vaccine. But by two weeks after stopping the treatments, the Vela vaccine group had significant increase in hot flashes where the hot flashes in the acupuncture group remained very low.
So this is very important because we are showing the effect of acupuncture. As a, something that enhances the ability of the body to, to bring itself back to balance. So we are really talking about the quality of the healing qualities of acupuncture which is lacking when you treat sometimes symptomatically, like in this.
And also in the Vela vaccine, it’s also very commonly known as Vix had many adverse effects. There was those in dry mouse dizziness and anxiety with acupuncture group. The opposite. There was no negative effect, but actually there was some additional benefit, even increasing sex drive in some women. And most of them reported improvement in their energy, clarity of thoughts and sense of wellbeing.
So the acupuncture group, No side effects is opposite. Had other benefits comparing to the group that took the vela vaccine? So in conclusion to this research, the acupuncture appears to be equivalent drug to therapy in this patients. But it is safe, effective, it’s a durable for vaso matter.
Vasomotor is this hotline, flashes and secondary for long term is also. Long term use of estrogen and anti hermon estrogen use. The points that they used in this research were quite interesting. So the main points you can see, and I mentioned them before, was bladder 23, kidney three in spleen six. So strengthening the kidney and in enhanced also the all the in channels and the spleen.
And this is the point that. All of the practitioner news, and then there were secondary points that can be a according to TM diagnosis. So the practitioners had some kind of freedom to choose which points are the most beneficial for the patient so they could do a diagnosis, Chinese medicine diagnosis and be more.
Exact on what’s going on with the patient. So if it was more heat and young, they couldn’t do 14 or do 20 with The 14 especially can reduce a lot of heat and especially if the heat goes up to the upper parts of the body. If those cheat deficiency like fatigue, stomach 36, ran six, lung nine, and if there was more disturbances at night Dreams, sleep disturbances goldbar 20 and leave it.
Or more agitation. By the way, many menopausal symptoms are to do with more blood stagnation agitation and if it was more to address the she than per card seven and heart seven. And this is the points we discussed before, and it was for 12 weeks. So four weeks, it was twice a week, and then another eight weeks, once a week treatment.
So the total treatment was for 16 weeks. And I would like to present another research, a larger research with 190 women and they received 10 acupuncture treatment session. And again, both of this research was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It’s a very reputable journal. So it’s in science, it’s not just what you publish, but where you publish it.
So publishing in such a journal has a lot of or additional weight to it. And especially if if you want to present a acupuncture evidence to oncologists or to the medical team, it’s good to quote high reputable journals such as the Journal of Clinical. So this also had a 10 acupuncture session.
So this group was doing as you will see, the choice of diagnosis and points was a bit more diverse than the first research. And this. Quite a few research on that topic I’m just presenting to, and they also followed up for three months and six months post-treatment visits. In both cases, we see its, and this uniqueness that it’s not just the treatment itself, but also when the treatment stops, we can still.
Even half a year and a year later, the effects of treatment. Cause many patients usually ask me, how long, do I need to come for acupuncture? Is it like a life thing? So I say, no. If you’ll come for a series of treatments, then the benefit. Should last long to me actually for many years. Because if the acupuncture was accurate in the diagnosis was good, it has an effect, which is a long term effect.
So again, here, the conclusion that acupuncture is effective integrity intervention which the quality of life and hot flashes for these women they use the much more elaborated. And actually, that’s what I love about this research. A real TCM diagnosis and Chinese medicine is a medicine we don’t just use points per condition, but we are trying to do a deeper diagnosis, understand better.
And different women will have hot flashes depending also on their The condition they came with. So if they came with more in deficiency, there’ll be more the hot flashes on and the quality of life impairment, your de deficiency. So there was a set of points, and here they actually looked at the percentage of the diagnosis.
16% of the women was diagnosed with kidney deficiency. I just highlighted the kidney points like 6, 3, 7, and 10 that they could choose. But obviously also you see here heart six, which is very good for heart and kidney in deficiency if it’s kidney in and young deficiency. Or kidney, liver in deficiency with some young rising then again will be different points.
So there’ll be still the kidney six, Percu seven as a kind. Major points to balance the kidney and percu of fire and water. But we’ll see here additional points like liver three and gold bladder 20 and maybe combination of liver three and large intestine four will to move the stagnation and enhance better levy and liver.
Two to reduce heat from the liver. So you see the point combination here is a different, Oh, sorry. Has a different dynamic including lung seven and kidney six, which is the opening the remi, the channel in front of the body, which is responsible for all the in. And then if it’s kidney and heart disharmony particularly, then you will see this group of points.
There’ll be more kidney points from kidney six to kidney two. Kidney two is one of the interesting points that can take back the heat into the kidneys and enhance the kidneys. So it’s not just reduces heat, but also enhances the kidney young. And additional point we’ll see per card six, hard six, the hard six that we discuss for the in of the heart.
And Percu six with each additional ability also to be the main point of the, in way my balancing all the in. In the body and enhancing the heart womb kind of balance. So also hormonally there will be much more enhancement in, in, in using this points. And additionally in this group, many other points that are to do with enhancing kidney and also relaxing points like on the du mind, CV 15, because the heart is so much involved.
And as you can see, there’s 10% in. Of patients in this group were 36%. So you see most of the patients were of kidney and liver in deficiency, so they were more coming from this group from Flame Studies, Flame of Chita. There were still, it’s very different diagnosis. You’ll see that we’ll have some other points like Stomach 40, splint 10.
So more looking at this dynamic of a phlegm and cheese stagnation additionally to kidney and hard points. And blood stuff is, interestingly enough, there was none in this group, but still in clinic in the when we look at the symptoms, sometimes the symptom. Is also very common and seen commonly.
When we I would like to say that one of my passions is to teach the treatments of cancer patients and especially to treat oncology, acupuncture. And we do a very extensive course at the TCM Academy, and the idea is to teach and give. Tools, but also the skills and the competencies to treat cancer patients and especially cancer patients who are having side effects.
And we combine the three pillars of Western medicine, Chinese medicine, and research and evidence base. Cause when we combine this three pillars, I think then there is a. Clearer understanding both of the sys, the symptom, the ability to communicate with the patients, and the also the medical team that is working with the patients.
And in cancer, it is extremely effective. Extremely effective, but extremely important to understand both the Western medicine and the Chinese medicine differentiation, which. Very relevant to cancer patients. So if you want to know more, you can check up at the TCM Academy website. And this is this extensive oncology acupuncture program which covers, There’s also in the website Ava free stuff, but covers also other ideas like pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and other components which are has so much.
To treat cancer patient and to treat the side effects. So I hope you learned something about the treatment of hot flashes, evidence based behind it. And with this slide I want to wish you all the best of health and from Chantel. She thank you very much for listening and being with us, and again, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting this up.
So all the best and thank you so much.