Choosing the right treatment regiment for post stroke patients is a major factor in their recovery and plays a vital role in determining their quality of life after a cerebral accident. Most physicians agree that post stroke care should be delivered by experienced health care practitioners within different treatment disciplines to help improve all of the various aspects of the patient’s life.
Acupuncture can play a pivotal role in these patients rehabilitation and help to alleviate and reduce symptoms such as: hemiplegic, muscle spasticity, aphasia, dysphasia or difficulties swallowing, sudden confusion (dementia), mental processes impairment, depression and urine incontinence and retention.
Most westerns are indeed unaware that Chinese physicians were actually the first to characterize the clinical symptoms of the condition that we have now come to know as apoplexy or stroke and define its causes. In one of the first medical annals of these physicians, "The Yellow Emperor’s Internal Cannon," written over 5,000 years ago, it describes the cause of sudden falls, loss of consciousness, and hemiplegic in those persons overweight as being due to the intake of rich and fatty foods and can be directly attributed to the cutting off of ones circulation of qi (and by extension blood) between the upper and lower parts of the body (Su Wen, Tong Ping Xu Shi Lun, Chapter 28).
In another chapter of the book other causes include anger and irritability which restrict circulation and cause the blood and qi to rush quickly into the upper half of the body causing a loss of consciousness which may be accompanied by spasticity of the tendons and cause hemi diaphoresis (sweating over one half of a persons body while absent from the other half, be it only on the upper half and not the lower, or only on the left side and not on the right) which in time if not properly treated can lead to hemiplegic (Su Wen. Sheng qi tong tian lun, Chapter 3).
We now have much more sophisticated language to describe these conditions such as arteriole sclerosis, hypertension, vassal occlusion, hemorrhagic stroke, and cerebral vascular disease. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that 5,000 years ago without the use of modern diagnostic tools Chinese physicians came to the same conclusion as many western doctors have only just discovered in the last few centuries that apoplexy is indeed caused by a lack of circulation of blood to the brain or hemorrhage and that two of the major contributing factors are hypertension and vassal occlusion.
Perhaps as a homage to those wise physicians we still commonly refer to this condition as wind-stroke, which was the title originally contrived by our Chinese predecessors who inferred by the patient’s some time spastic jerks that gusts of wind had entered the patient’s vascular system and were shaking the patient’s body.
With the development of Chinese medicine, physician’s understanding of the causes of apoplexy also became more profound. By the Jin dynasty (1115-1234), many physicians such as Liu He Jian, Li Dong Yuan, and Zhu Dan Xi had determined that the causes of apoplexy were due to internal deficiencies and began to use a number of different methods to treat the condition.
Not limiting themselves to only Chinese herbs, but also using acupuncture and moxabustion. Their theories changed the way that apoplexy was treated and laid the ground work for how acupuncture treatment is administered today for post-stroke patients.
Despite Chinese medicine’s deep roots and its reluctance at times to adapt to new theories in Western medical science, with our furthered understanding of how the brain works acupuncturists have begun to direct their treatments specifically to those areas of the brain that are damaged by cerebral accidents.
By applying acupuncture to the skin of the scalp above the various regions of the cerebral cortex that have been damaged in an ischemic stroke we can increase blood flow and the metabolic activity of neural cells to help restore normal neural function. This treatment has been used successfully over the last 40 years to help patients suffering from hemiplegic and related neural deficiencies arising from strokes and other cerebral vascular diseases.
With the emergence of functional MRI we are learning more about acupuncture’s ability to increase neural activity within different locations in the brain using different acupuncture points and can now direct our treatments to the areas of the brain that were damaged by a cerebral vascular accident and areas of the brain that are thought to be impaired based on clinical findings. Within China’s modern day hospitals acupuncture is one of the first options for post-stroke rehabilitation patients once they are stable.
The best example of the popularity of acupuncture treatment for post-stroke patients can be seen at Tian Jin Center for the Study of Chinese Medicine which is the First Affiliated Hospital to the Tian Jin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. There, under the guidance of world renown professor Dr. Shi Xue Ming hundreds of post-stroke patients are treated daily using his "Waking of the Brian and Opening of the Orifices" method with great success.
Due to the nature of this condition it is always hard to predict when and how dramatic a recovery a patient will make. The normal course of treatment lasts 10-15 days with the patient being treated daily or in some cases twice a day. Then resting for five days and beginning the next course of treatment.
By the end of the first course of treatment the acupuncturist should have a good idea as to how much of a recovery the patient can make and with the patient set some realistic rehabilitation goals. On average most patients receive three courses of treatment.
Nevertheless, many patients often continue to experience curative effects after three courses and continue to receive treatment sometimes even up to a year or longer. Acupuncture is not a replacement for physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language therapy, or any other healing modality. Rather, it works as an important supplement to these other methods of healing and if treatment is well coordinated between practitioners the best result can be obtained for each individual.
Unlike Western medicine, Chinese medicine places great emphasis on prophylactic care and the prevention of disease. Chinese physicians discovered early the warning signs of an evolving stroke and came up with individualized treatment methods to help arrest its development. This is good news for people suffering from TIA, hemi diaphoresis, sporadic feelings of numbness and weakness within the limbs, vascular disease, poor circulation, and chronic high blood pressure; all of which if untreated could lead to a stroke.
Through changes in life style and regular acupuncture therapy all of these conditions can be managed and in most cases reversed before they become life threatening.
Acupuncture has been used for thousands of yeas to treat post-stroke patients in China. Even with the advancements in modern medicine that have since taken place acupuncture still remains one of the first lines of treatment for thousands of post-stroke patients each day. Let is help you to regain your health and your independence.
Further research and stories regarding on Acupuncture’s effect on post-stroke recovery:
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