A well-designed study from UCI suggests that with regular treatments, electroacupuncture, which is where acupuncture needles are connected to a small amount of electrical current and placed at specific acupoints, in this study PC5-PC6 and ST36-37, reduces blood pressure. The authors imply that this could lead to a long-term reduction in heart disease and stroke. Although the numbers are relatively small (65), I really enjoyed this study because Dr. Longhurt used both men and women, the participants were not on any drugs that could lower their blood pressure, and for his control group he used acupuncture points that do not affect blood pressure. He also looked at blood levels of substances such as norepinephrine, renin and aldosterone that are known to affect blood pressure, before and after the acupuncture intervention and was able to see a significant decrease. Hopefully, more studies will be done to “prove” to the scientific community that acupuncture truly does work on most people.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/acu.2015.1106
