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Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs Can Help Relieve the Chronic Symptoms of COPD

COPD or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has turned into the number three deadliest disease in the United States superseded only by cardiovascular disease and cancer. A progressive disease, COPD just gets worse over time and unfortunately, Western medicine has no answer to it.

Western trained physicians often recommend the patient stop smoking and prescribe them with inhaler medications or portable oxygen bottles with mask to breathe in. since COPD has no known cure, the focus of the treatment is to help manage the disease. A lung transplant is the most radical type of treatment and is usually considered as a last resort.

Usually occurring on smokers, COPD can also develop when one is constantly breathing in toxic air from asbestos filaments and other chemical pollutants or asbestos filaments.

COPD is actually a set of diseases that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis; asthma, does not classify as a type of COPD condition. Asthma can be managed unlike COPD and occurs usually among children suffering from auto-immune allergies. A lot of children have asthma that is induced psychosomatically and more often than not, they outgrow it. COPD, on the other hand, occurs later in life, develops independently of other auto-immune conditions and worsens with age.

Asthmatics Often Experience Productive Coughing

While it’s not uncommon for COPD sufferers to breathe from an oxygen tank or bottle, this problem is not experienced by asthma sufferers. Although during attacks asthma patients tend to suffer narrow bronchial tubes, this issue is not necessarily endured by the patient day to day. The respiratory tract for patients with chronic bronchitis is thicker which makes the tract less elastic causing enormous problems in breathing for the patient.

A double-blind placebo trial done by researchers at the Department of Respiratory Medicine of the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine involved the use of placebo acupuncture, and real acupuncture combined with medications on 68 subjects who all had COPD. Both the placebo and real acupuncture groups were administered with their respective treatments before and after the 12 week study,

One treatment per week for 12 weeks was given to both the placebo and real acupuncture group. All the subjects were examined for DOE or dyspnea on exertion after a six-minute walk before and after the three month period. To calculate the perceived degree of exertion on the walk, the researchers used a Borg scale.

The researchers discovered that the Borg scores of the real acupuncture group was higher than the scores of the placebo or sham acupuncture group which means they showed less shortness of breath and dyspnea on exertion as they were able to exert and tolerate more exercise than the placebo group.

The conclusion reached by the researchers at the end of the study was that acupuncture can be an ideal adjunctive therapy along with Western drugs for the relief of dyspnea.

Conclusion

In spite of the success of the above mentioned trial, the question of why the researchers did not use herbal remedies instead of pharmaceuticals should be raised. Why continue to use treatments that are known to be toxic? From the viewpoint of alternative and natural medicine, though significant, the trial would be much better if it did include herbal preparations instead of drugs. Some practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine who heavily depend on acupuncture almost always use Chinese herbs along with the treatment.

Also, there are powerful Western supplements that have shown an ability to resolve inflammation and clear out hardened tissues. One of these is serrapeptase, a protease enzyme derived from the digestive tract of the silkworm.

Accumulations of mucus and inflamed scar tissue can be broken down by serrapeptase. It is a rather inexpensive supplement that can help relieve the chronic symptoms of COPD.

Eastern Healing Solutions, LLC
10875 Grandview Dr #2250
Overland Park, KS 66210
Phone: (913) 549-4322
www.overlandparkacupuncturist.com

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