Acupuncture helps improve diabetes

Diabetes is a chronic condition wherein the body is unable to properly metabolize sugar leading to the symptoms of excessive hunger, excessive thirst, frequent urination and loss of body weight. Body’s sugar level is controlled by hormone insulin produced by the cells in the pancreases. Lack of insulin or poor response to insulin result in failure to break down glucose to energy, leading to high blood sugar.

Acupuncture and herbal medicine have been used to treat diabetes for over 2000 years. Diabetes was described as “wasting and thirsting disease” in “Huangdi Neijing”, a classic book of traditional Chinese medicine about 2500 years ago. Patients are described as having symptoms of increased hunger, increased thirst and frequent urination and rapid loss of weight; all symptoms of diabetes. Ancient Chinese medicine practitioners were able to diagnose diabetes using ants. If ants were attracted to the urine sample placed closing to ant colony the practitioners knew there was excess sugar in the blood.

Patients with type I diabetes need insulin injection for the rest of their life. Acupuncture has a history to rebalance body’s systems through increasing blood circulation etc and this should minimise long-term impact of cardiovascular problems which tend to develop in later years in type I diabetes. Recently a study of type II diabetes reported that acupuncture treatment of 83 women patients significantly reduced levels of fasting plasma glucose, fasting insulin, insulin resistance index, total cholesterol, triglyceride and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and markedly increased insulin sensitivity index, index of islet beta-cell function and high density lipoprotein cholesterol.

This suggests that acupuncture is effective in decreasing blood sugar level, improving pancreatic function and minimizing risk of cardiovascular system.

Reference:

Wang Y et al., Efficacy analysis on type 2 diabetes mellitus treated with acupuncture in females. Zhongguo Zhen Jiu. 2014 Jan;34(1):21-4.   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24673047