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Acupuncture and Dysmenorrhea Menstrual pain or dysmenorrhea has been cited to affect anywhere from 29-92% of women between the ages of 13 and 45 (ref.5). This gross variance is due to an estimation of all the women in this country that take oral contraceptives in order to reduce their monthly symptoms. The word dysmenorrhea is derived from the Greek word dys, meaning �difficult/painful/abnormal�, meno meaning �month�, and rrhea meaning �flow�. From this alone, the word abnormal stands out, indicating cramps are not part of a healthy woman�s menstrual cycle. Why then do women in this country accept it as part of having their period? Dysmenorrhea is pain that can occur before, during, or after one�s period. This pain can range from severe stabbing pain a couple days before onset of the period to a dull achy pain right after the end of menstruation. To avoid having pain during your period, according to TCM, there needs to both an adequate supply of blood and freely moving blood. Several factors can affect these variables. Emotional strain, such as anger, frustration, resentment, or irritability can cause the blood in the channels to get stuck or stagnant, thus slowly the movement of the blood, causing pain. Excessive exposure to cold and damp can invade the body and slow the movement of blood. This occurs easily right after the period when the Blood has been drained and is weak. Overwork and chronic illness can drain both your energy and blood. This will initially cause an inadequate supply of blood, but over time will also cause the blood to stagnate as there is not enough blood to fill the vessels. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), dysmenorrhea is differentiated into five different syndromes. Differentiation of signs and symptoms determines the presentation or syndrome. As an acupuncturist, I look at several things to determine how best to relieve the pain. It is important to know the severity of pain, the quality (sharp, stabbing, achy, distending, etc.), the location, and the accompanying symptoms. To properly determine how best to treat, a TCM practitioner also looks at health history. An imbalance in the body will represent itself in many different ways and each of these are clues to the practitioner about the underlying or root disharmony. An acupuncture practitioner also uses the radial pulse on both wrists, the tongue, and often abdominal palpation to get a full sense of the state of the body. Acupuncture has been extremely effective in dealing with relieving women�s monthly pain. In a study published in the Zhejiang Journal of Chinese Medicine, acupuncture alone gave relief of dysmenorrhea to 85% of the women involved. Eleven percent of women showed some improvement and the remaining 2% had no improvement from the acupuncture (ref. 2). Through the gentle insertion of fine needles into carefully selected points on the body, acupuncture can ease the body back into balance thus fixing the cause of the pain. It is sad that women today rely on ibuprofen and other drugs as part of their monthly protocol to deal with their pain. These only temporarily ease the symptom, but will never fix the root problem. Therefore, it can never get better. The use of oral contraceptives as a means of relieving dysmenorrhea causes more long-term problems. First, the woman is on a drug that she takes daily for something that occurs a couple days a month. Secondly, the chemical properties of oral contraceptives stagnate the blood further and can be seen by the reduction or absence of flow as pill use continues over time. Therefore, once a woman goes off the pill, the pain may be much more severe than it was before she began taking it. Acupuncture can offer women a way to treat the imbalance causing the pain to avoid the monthly difficulties surrounding their period that may interfere with work, exercise, or play. I am grateful to this medicine for showing women enough respect so that they don�t have to suffer through their periods anymore. References: 1. Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion. Foreign Language
Press. 2. �Hand Technique and the Treatment of Dysmenorrhea with
Acupuncture�. Zhong, Ya, Zhong, Shou-qun. 3. Maciocia, Giovanni. The Practice of Chinese Medicine.
Churchill Livingstone. 4. �The Pill and Stagnant Blood�. Flaws, Bob. Journal of Chinese Medicine. no. 23. January 1990. p. 19-21. 5. www.emedicine.com/MED/topic606.htm �Dysmenorrhea�. Alzubaidi, Nahrain M.D. June 2002. |
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