Originally published April 9 2013
Acupuncture relieves COPD: Scientific research
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, commonly called COPD, has become the number three disease killer, behind cardiovascular disease and cancer. COPD is a progressive disease. It just gets worse, and mainstream medicine has no cure.
Medical doctors usually recommend smoking cessation and offer pharmaceutical inhaler drugs with dangerous side effects or portable oxygen bottles to breathe in straight pharmaceutical oxygen with a mask. Managing the disease is the medical establishment's theme, not curing it. The last resort for COPD is a lung transplant.
COPD occurs mostly among smokers. But constantly breathing in toxic air from chemical pollutants or asbestos filaments can cause what appears to the medical establishment as permanent lung damage and/or COPD.
COPD includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, but asthma is not under the COPD umbrella. Asthma usually occurs among children with other auto-immune allergies and is considered more manageable. Some kids whose asthma is mostly psychosomatic induced even "outgrow it." This author knows from personal experience. But COPD occurs later in life, usually without other auto-immune baggage, and worsens with age.
Shortness of breath or dyspnea (pronounced disp-NEE-uh) and wheezing are common to all of these lung disorders. Asthmatics usually have drier coughs than COPD sufferers whose coughing produces phlegm. There is crossover of toxic medications prescribed for most of their shared symptoms, though not all of them are interchangeable.
While it's not uncommon for COPD sufferers to be breathing from oxygen bottles, that situation is virtually non-existent among asthmatics. In addition to their major mortality rate differences, there are slight structural differences between COPD and asthma.
Asthmatics suffer from constricted bronchial tubes during attacks, but this condition is not necessarily chronic from day to day. COPD sufferers with emphysema have lost lung airway elasticity and the airway tubes of COPD chronic bronchitis sufferers are thicker. COPD symptoms are chronic and are experienced in varying degrees daily, as the name implies.
A Japanese study on applying acupuncture to COPD sufferers
A few years ago in Japan's Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, their Department of Respiratory Medicine conducted a double-blind placebo trial among 68 COPD sufferers, all on medications, using acupuncture on half and sham or placebo acupuncture on the other.
Both the sham and real acupuncture sessions were performed once a week for 12 weeks. Before and after the 12-week period, all subjects were tested for "dyspenia on exertion" (DOE) after a six-minute walk. They used a Borg scale to calculate the perceived intensity of exertion on the walk.
The researchers discovered that the acupuncture group had higher Borg scores, indicating they were able to exert and tolerate more exercise, while exhibiting less DOE or shortness of breath after the walk than the placebo or sham acupuncture group.
They concluded that acupuncture would be a useful adjunct for relieving dyspenia with conventional medical treatment.
Conclusion from a NaturalNews perspective
Why continue using toxic treatments with effective non-toxic treatments? This trial, though admirable, did not include any of Traditional Chinese Medicine's (TCM) other tools - herbal remedies. There are some TCM practitioners who rely heavily on acupuncture, but most incorporate Chinese herbs as well.
There are also some Western supplements that have demonstrated a capacity to remove hardened tissues and resolve inflammation. One of them is a proteolytic or protease enzyme from the silkworm known as serrapeptase.
Serrapeptase is capable of breaking down proteins and accumulations of inflamed scar tissues and mucous. It is a uniquely powerful proteolytic enzyme that is accessible and not priced out of range.
There is quite a story involving a man with severe enough COPD emphysema to need a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen tanks and a breathing mask. Someone advised him to try serrapeptase and maybe ease up on the steroids.
His turnaround was dramatic (http://www.naturalnews.com/026360_serrapeptase_natural_health.html).
Sources for this article include:
http://www.vitasearch.com/get-clp-summary/40400
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22905352
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19055335
http://www.mayoclinic.org/copd/treatment.html
http://www.everydayhealth.com
http://www.everydayhealth.com
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