Electroacupuncture can lower blood pressure

Dr. John C. Longhurst, director of the Susan Samueli Centre for Integrative Medicine at UC Irvine ,and researchers, have found that acupuncture using low levels of electrical stimulation can lower elevations in blood pressure by as much as 50 percent.

Acupuncture, an ancient form of Chinese medicine, involves inserting needles at specific points on the body to help cure disease or relieve pain.

The study, which appears in the March issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, found that electroacupuncture treatments on rats provided temporary relief from the conditions that raise blood pressure during hypertensive states and they believe the treatment has the potential to become part of a therapeutic regimen for long-term care of hypertension and other cardiovascular ailments in people.

Longhurst says the study suggests that acupuncture can be an excellent complement to other medical treatments, especially for those treating the cardiac system and the Western World is waiting for a clear scientific basis for using acupuncture. He hopes the research will lead to the integration of ancient healing practices into modern medical treatment.

Longhurst and his UCI colleagues had already identified in previous studies, at the cellular and molecular level, how acupuncture excites brain cells to release neurotransmitters that either inhibit or heighten cardiovascular activity.

In this later study they found that when an acupuncture needle was inserted at specific sites on the wrist, inside of the forearm or leg, it triggered the release of opioid chemicals in the brain that reduce excitatory responses in the cardiovascular system. This decreases the heart's activity and its need for oxygen, which in turn can lower blood pressure, and promotes healing for a number of cardiac ailments, such as myocardial ischemia ( insufficient blood flow to the heart ) and hypertension.

The team first applied acupuncture to specific points on the forelimb of test rats with artificially elevated blood pressure rates; these same sites on humans are on the inside of the forearm slightly above the wrist. The acupuncture alone had no effect on blood pressure.

But when they added electrical stimulation to the acupuncture treatment by running an electrical current through the needles, low frequencies lowered increased blood pressure by as much as 40 to 50 percent. Overall, the researchers found that a 30-minute treatment reduced blood pressure rates in the test rats by 25 mmHg - with the effect lasting almost two hours.

Longhurst, a cardiologist who is also the Lawrence K. Dodge Professor in Integrative Biology says this treatment is only effective on elevated blood pressure levels, such as those present in hypertension, and the treatment has no impact on standing blood pressure rates. Their goal is to help establish a standard of acupuncture treatment that can benefit everyone who has hypertension and other cardiac ailments.

Longhurst and his colleagues are currently testing this electroacupuncture treatment method in an ongoing human study.

Drs. Wei Zhou, Liang-Wu Fu, Stephanie C. Tjen-A-Looi and Peng Li of the UCI Department of Medicine participated in the study, which was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the Larry K. Dodge Endowed Chair.

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