Lily is pleased to announce that she will be commencing her research work and studies from 13th September which will see the start of a tough but exciting 4 year journey with Southampton University.  Her project will be focused on looking at how Chinese herbal medicine can help gynaecological conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and more specifically at how Chinese herbs can aid with fertility amongst these particular patients.  

Fertility has long been a focus of Lily's practical experience and she is excited to have been presented with the opportunity to complement her clinical work by joining one of the most advanced complementary medicine research groups in Europe to carry out her research.  With her studies, Lily is looking to better understand from a more scientific perspective the role that Chinese herbs can play in treating women with these conditions and to contribute to strengthening the available research evidence for Chinese herbal medicine.

Lily is keen to continue treating patients alongside her research and will therefore continue to offer appointments from Revive Sports Rehabilitation & Acupuncture Clinic, so please do get in touch if you would like to book in with either Lily or Greg!   

Please feel free to sign up for regular updates either via her RSS feed or by subscribing to Lily's newsletter through her Contact Form as she will be hoping to keep you updated along the way!    

Lily is very excited to announce that Greg Meier will be joining her practice and hope that you will join her in giving him a warm welcome on board!

Greg has recently completed his Master's degree in Chinese medicine and has a keen interest in musculoskeletal conditions, gynaecological conditions and fertility and skin problems.  Greg is an extremely caring and intuitive practitioner and will be complementing Lily's practice with his additional experience in Tui Na treatments and Facial Rejuvenation treatments.  Lily is very much looking forward to offering a much more diverse range of Chinese medicine treatments and specialities in different conditions and is confident that patients, both current and future, will benefit from the combined expertise that she and Greg will be offering from the practice.

More information about these treatments and about Greg will be coming so please do check back regularly for updates or contact Lily for further details!

Calling all mums-to-be!  If you're interested in learning more about using Acupressure as a natural way of relieving pain during childbirth, please click on the link below to read Lily's latest update to her conditions page:

Acupressure: Natural Pain Relief Techniques during Childbirth

A fascinating study in Korea¹ published this August looked at the effects of acupuncture on endothelial dysfunction in patients with hypertension.  

What exactly is endothelial dysfunction?

The endothelium is the inner lining of our veins and arteries and normally secretes substances that, amongst many other things, help to regulate blood flow and blood clotting².  Endothelial dysfunction is the term used where there is a reversible imbalance between these substances which can lead to high blood pressure and which plays an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease³.  Testing for endothelial dysfunction has therefore become of great importance for predicting the risk of a patient developing cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, stroke and heart attacks.  One such technique is called Flow-Mediated Dilation (FMD) which is used in the study reported below⁴.

What did the study aim to show?

The study looked at: 

a) whether or not acupuncture improves endothelial dysfunction in patients with hypertension

b) if the above was true, which acupuncture points presented with the most benefit.

What kind of trial was this?  

The trial was:

Randomised

The patients are randomly assigned to treatment groups which ensures that both groups remain comparable at the beginning of the trial.

Double-blind

This means that neither the investigator nor the patient are aware of which of the treatments were being administered, although this is difficult to achieve in acupuncture trials from the investigator perspective.  It is unclear from the details how the investigator was blinded in this trial.   

Placebo-controlled

The patients were aware that as well as the acupuncture on ‘true acupuncture’ points, they could be offered an inactive treatment on ‘placebo points’ which would have no effect on their symptoms.  

Crossover trial

The patients received a sequence of different treatments for the duration of the study. 

What treatments did patients receive?

15 patients suffering with hypertension received a randomised sequence of four acupuncture treatment phases consisting of needling the following points:

Phase 1: Zu San Li ST36

Phase 2: Nei Guan PC6

Phase 3: Zu San Li ST36 and Nei Guan PC6

Phase 4: Placebo points

Points were needled on both sides for 15 minutes.  The Flow-Mediated Dilation (FMD) and blood pressure were assessed before and after each acupuncture treatment.  A 7 day break was given before the next acupuncture treatment was offered.

What were the results?

The researchers observed significant improvements in FMD in patients who received acupuncture at Zu San Li ST36 and at both Zu San Li ST36 and Nei Guan PC6 compared with patients who received acupuncture at Nei Guan PC6 and at placebo points.  

What do the results from the trial mean?

The researchers concluded that ‘this study demonstrates that acute treatment of acupuncture in hypertensive patients improves endothelial dysfunction.’

This was a pilot study which is designed to be a small scale test study and despite the relatively small number of participants,  the results are both encouraging and fascinating.   Using objective outcome measures such as FMD means that results are not dependent on the judgement of the researcher or the patient and therefore provides more clinically valid and reliable results.   However, due to limited access to the paper, it cannot be commented as to how adequate the placebo treatment was in the trial nor how successfully the double blinding was carried out.    

The overall conclusions drawn from the study support the need for this research to be carried out on a larger scale.  Further studies should look also into the long-term effects that acupuncture has on endothelial dysfunction in order to explore the role in which acupuncture could potentially play in reducing cardiovascular risk. 

References

1. Park JM, Shin AS, Park SU, Sohn IS, Jung WS, Moon SK. The acute effect of acupuncture on endothelial dysfunction in patients with hypertension: A pilot, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial. J Altern Complemen Med. 2010 Aug 1. Available from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20673141 [Accessed 3 August 2010].
2. Puddu P, Puddu GM, Zaca F, Muscari A. Endothelial dysfunction in hypertension. Acta Cardiol. 2000 Aug;55(4):221-32.
3. Sitia S, Tomasoni L, Atzeni F, Ambrosio G, Cordiano C et al. From endothelial dysfunction to atherosclerosis. Autoimmun Rev. 2010 Jul 30. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20678595. [Accessed 3 August 2010].
4. Korkmaz H, Orhan O. Evaluation of endothelial dysfunction: flow-mediated dilation. Endothelium-J Endoth. 2008 Jul;15(4):157-163.

An exciting new study published by the University of Hong Kong has demonstrated just how acupuncture might work for stroke patients suffering with aphasia, a condition where the patient loses the ability to communicate due to brain damage affecting the patient's ability to talk, understand, read and write.

This small scale study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discover that changes in language function were strongly correlated with brain activation in the affected speech area following acupuncture treatment - encouraging news for patients and healthcare professionals alike.  This study is particularly exciting since the use of fMRI can offer insight as to how acupuncture might work for patients, an area that has baffled scientists and doctors since the 1950s when scientific studies surrounding acupuncture's mechanisms of action began. 

The study authors concluded that 'these preliminary results suggest that acupuncture may be beneficial to language recovery in chronic stroke patients'.

Chau AC, Fai Cheung RT, Jiang X, Au-Yeung PK, Li LS. An fMRI study showing the effect of acupuncture in chronic stage stroke patients with aphasia. J Acupunct Meridian Stud. 2010 Mar;3(1):53-57.