Alternative Medicine Information

Acupuncture relieves symptoms in women, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a disease difficult to treat hormone that affects one in 10 women of reproductive age.

Women with PCOS have high levels of testosterone and other “male hormones, ovarian cysts, irregular menstruation and fertility problems, with symptoms such as excessive growth of body and facial hair and acne.

Currently, told Reuters Health Dr. Elisabet Stener-Victorin, University of Gothenburg in Sweden, treatments for PCOS are directed to the symptoms and will often include the use of hormones.

The team led by Stener-Victorin conducted the study from the idea that women with PCOS have an overactive sympathetic nervous system, which produces the answer “fight or flight”.

Reducing this hyperactivity, which is associated with heart disease and a condition similar to diabetes found in women with PCOS, alleviate the symptoms.

The team divided 20 women with PCOS into three groups: one received acupuncture for 16 weeks, the other was to increase physical activity to 120 pulses per minute for 30-45 minutes for at least three days a week for 16 weeks.

The third cohort received information about healthy eating and exercise, but without an indication of changing their habits (control group).

Women treated with acupuncture received 14 sessions in total, with needles in different parts of the abdominal and back of knees emitting a low frequency electric charge.

The study results were published in the online edition of American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

At 16 weeks, the sympathetic nervous system activity in muscle was much lower in the group treated with acupuncture and which were exercised in the control group. Women who lost weight had been active, but not those treated with acupuncture.

But that last group had a decrease in waist size, which was not observed in the group that exercised. Acupuncture did also decrease menstrual irregularities and lower testosterone levels, which did not occur with physical activity.

The study is part of a larger investigation, which includes 74 women, and Stener-Victorin team is conducting further analysis of the effects of acupuncture on PCOS symptoms and quality of life in these women.

In patients with PCOS, according to the authors, would like to know if acupuncture can be helped. “It had the side effects always appear with hormonal stimulation. It is a safe with few complications, so it would be worth a try,” the team said.

It would only take three or four months of therapy to test their effectiveness, said Stener-Victorin.