A 53 year old female patient of mine was commenting that she was getting hot flushes at least 4-5 times in a week. She would feel the heat well up until it reaches it’s climax followed heavy perspiration with accompanying red flush. She was here for another medical matter but I offered her treatment anyway. The following week, she books in to see me – she wants another treatment. She had only ONE hot flush for the entire week and in that episode, the heat dissipated before it reached its climactic point so it wasn’t even a complete hot flush. She could now sleep at night without any disruption. I only see her every few months or so for a top up now.
The effect appears to last in the range of weeks to months. I suspect there is actually a permanent improvement, not just temporary. It doesn’t appear to work on everyone – however my rate of success so far seems to be about 75%.
How and why does it work? In short, we don’t really know. From a western medical perspective, we don’t know why one person gets these symptoms while others do not even though the hormonal changes are the same for everyone in menopause. We think the hot flushes are from the body trying to re-ignite the ovaries to produce more eggs. Others appear to more sensitive to this process in the form of hot flushes. From the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) perspective, menopause occurs due to weakness of Kidney Yin and/or Yang deficiency as well as Liver and Spleen imbalances*. I would use laser acupuncture to balance and tonify those various deficiencies. I approach menopausal hot flush treatment entirely from a TCM perspective. For whatever reason, it seems to work… Hopefully one day we’ll understand how this works from a scientific point of view as well.
It is well established that taking HRT (hormone replacement therapy) beyond 5 years is associated with increased chance of breast cancer. There is also an increased risk of endometrial hyperplasia (abnormal thickening of the uterine lining) and blood clots. These negative effects are more with the combinted HRT – that is, oestrogen with progesterone. That is why your GP will nudge you to try and wean off HRT if you’ve been on it for > 5 years. I see the role of laser acupuncture in this scenario as a way to facilitate successful weaning of HRT.
As an aside, there are some doctors out there that prescribe ‘bioidentical’ hormones which they claim to be safer than HRT. These have to be specially compounded. From my understanding, there is little or no evidence that shows that they are more safer or more effective. They usually charge a ridiculously large fee for it as well – a great money making machine. My advice, STEER CLEAR.
*Note that the TCM organs aren’t exactly equivalent to the western medical ones. E.g. I would not say that if you are having bad hot flushes that your kidneys have an organic pathology.
