Bell’s Palsy is a condition of acute onset facial paralysis due to dysfunction of the facial nerve. The presentation is quite confronting and usually patients rightly present to the emergency department worried about a stroke. Scans of the brain will be normal ruling out a stroke and a clinical diagnosis of Bell’s Palsy is made. By definition, Bell’s Palsy is a diagnosis of exclusion meaning if they can’t find a cause of the facial paralysis only then they will they label the condition as Bell’s Palsy. With that said, the current science believes the cause to be a viral infection affecting the facial nerve which is why the treatment is an early course of oral steroids aiming to reduce nerve inflammation and swelling. Early oral steroids has been shown to improve long term functional outcome.
Within 3 weeks even without treatment, Bell’s palsy will start to improve somewhat. By about 12 months, a majority of people will have completely recovered. A small percentage of people will have a degree of ongoing facial paralysis permanently or other complications of Bell’s Palsy. This is more likely if they have more than one attack of Bell’s palsy.
Acupuncture has been explored for it’s role in Bell’s Palsy treatment. There have been some small trials on this showing short to medium term functional improvements but much larger and longer studies are needed. Unfortunately acupuncture does not have the equivalent of big pharma to help fund such studies.
I had a 24 year old female present 3 weeks after Bell’s palsy onset on the right side. She had had the correct early steroid treatment. She had 2 sessions of needle acupuncture one week apart by another practitioner. Overall, there had been some improvements with her facial paralysis but she still had a noticeably assymetrical smile. I did only one treatment on her with laser acupuncture using facial points- 6 points each for about 1-2 seconds. I scheduled 2 weeks time for another session but the appointment was cancelled as she was 90% recovered (enough not for people to notice). I can’t say for sure, but that fast improvement was conceivably brought about by the acupuncture treatment – including the prior needle acupuncture sessions.
Science has shown that acupuncture reduces swelling and stimulates nerves. Theoretically, it should be able to increase the rate of recovery for this condition and small studies support this assertion. Certainly there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that it works including my own. Therefore there’s good reason to use acupuncture for Bell’s Palsy.
