Can Acupuncture Help With Asthma?

Acupuncture can be used to treat asthma through traditional acupuncture with needles or through another acupuncture treatment called cupping, says Annie Sturman, a licensed acupuncture physician and owner of Annie Sturman Acupuncture. She has been treating patients with illnesses and pain for the past 20 years. "I have an asthma patient now, and one of the main things we do to treat asthma is the cold condition of the lungs," she says.

According to Internet Health Library, a website that answers medical questions, there are many studies related to the success of acupuncture treatment for asthma that have been reported in medical journals. A study conducted at the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care in the University Hospital of Vienna revealed that over 70% of patients with long-standing asthma reported a significant improvement of their ailments after 10 weeks of acupuncture treatment.

As stated on the Internet Health Library, "traditional acupuncturists treat the whole person rather than a disease and therefore attempt to get to the root cause of the problem rather than treating the symptoms and, like other holistic practitioners, will consider all lifestyle and environmental factors before commencing treatment."

There are two types of asthma, extrinsic and intrinsic, and both respond to acupuncture. Intrinsic asthma is caused by factors such as chemicals, cold air, exercise, infection and emotional upset. Extrinsic is allergy related and is triggered by pollen, dust and molds. Studies in China involving acupuncture have shown that needling one of the acupuncture points increased ventilation capacity by 6.6%. Acupuncture appears to act on the nervous system by relieving excitation of the parasympathetic nerves while raising the level of excitation of sympathetic nerves. Acupuncture also appears to reduce the level of inflammatory chemicals in the blood, thereby reducing allergic responses. Acupuncture has the effect of strengthening a person's constitution and overall health so that their allergic response is reduced.

Another acupuncture treatment, cupping also aids in the relief of asthma symptoms. Cupping refers to a practice, where a cup is applied to the skin and the pressure in the cup is reduced by using heat or by suctioning out air, so that the skin and muscle layer is drawn into and held in the cup. "We do something called cryo cupping and we put heat on a bottle of alcohol and stick it under a little glass jar of the little glass cup to take the oxygen out," says Sturman. "It creates suction on the back, and when it does, it brings blood to the area, warms the lung and looses the phlegm and gets it out."