Alternative Asthma Treatments-Acupuncture

As an example, there is acupuncture, a treatment developed in China about 5000 years ago and still widely used there but rarely in the United States. Asthma is one of the diseases described as treatable with acupuncture, a technique that involves inserting thin needles through the skin at certain sites. Acupuncture needles placed in exact positions definitely improve acute exercise-induced asthma in some patients. Improvement often occurs within one-half hour, but is not permanent and not all patients treated get better, but patients who improve once can be expected to improve again after additional treatment. The amount of improvement is also fairly constant, although bronchospasm improves only by about 50%. Acupuncture is helpful only in exercise-inducted asthma; it does not seem to benefit patients with asthma related to allergies or inflammation.

Most of the information about treatment by acupuncture comes from China, where that treatment is readily available and inexpensive. Publications such as the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the American Journal of Chinese Medicine publish well-conceived and implemented studies of the usefulness of acupuncture in treatment of asthma. Results are equivocal, some demonstrating usefulness of acupuncture, others not.

Although studies are readily available, in the United States experienced practitioners are hard to find and treatment is not nearly as convenient as and much more expensive than traditional therapies. This situation could change dramatically as and if acupuncture proves itself in the asthma-care marketplace.

Reflexology, sometimes called zone therapy, is a second cousin to acupuncture. It involves massaging specific points on the foot, or sometimes the hand, to treat asthma. From 1987 through June 1996, there were several articles in medical journals descriptive of reflexology but none of these concerned reflexology and asthma.