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Ancient Remedies for Modern Lives

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Research published in the August 24, 2015 JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY shows acupuncture to be more effective than the medication gabapentin, “sham” acupuncture, and a placebo pill for treating hot flashes among breast cancer survivors.

 

The effects of acupuncture were “significant and enduring for hot flashes while gabapentin’s effect only happened when a patient was taking the medication,” said study first author Dr. Jun Mao, an associate professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Also very interesting: the results with the sham acupuncture, which were shown to be more effective than gabapentin, suggest that “there is more than a placebo effect with the sham acupuncture,” said Dr. Gary Deng, interim chief of the integrative medicine service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “There is a component of behavior of doing a sham procedure, so it psychologically may trigger a different kind of reaction from patients versus taking the placebo pill.”

Read the whole article here: http://bit.ly/1U8tSc8