UCLA Center for East-West Medicine

Acupuncture is a central part of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In this ancient system of medicine, it is believed that vital energy, called qi, flows through twenty pathways, or meridians, which are connected by acupuncture points. If qi is blocked, the body can't function at its peak, so the goal of acupuncture is to open certain points on these pathways and release blocked qi. 

A lot of research is being done on how acupuncture can help relieve some of the symptoms of cancer and side effects of cancer treatment. Acupuncture has been shown to help relieve fatigue, hot flashes, nausea, vomiting, and pain. Some examples:

• The most thorough study of acupuncture in breast cancer patients was published in Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000. In the study, 104 women undergoing high-dose chemotherapy were given traditional anti-nausea medication. In addition to taking the medication, the women were randomly chosen to receive 5 days of acupuncture, or no acupuncture. The women who had acupuncture had significantly fewer nausea episodes than those who didn't.

•  Another study, completed at Duke University and published in 2002, compared the use of acupuncture to the use of Zofran, an anti-nausea medication, before breast cancer surgery to reduce the nausea that can occur after surgery. The acupuncture treatment was found to work better than Zofran at controlling nausea.

•  In a French study published in 2003, acupuncture was examined in the treatment of cancer-related pain. Patients treated with acupuncture had a 36% reduction in pain after 2 months of acupuncture treatments, compared with a 2% reduction in pain in the patients receiving a placebo type of acupuncture.

•  In one very preliminary 2004 study at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, acupuncture was shown to reduce post-chemotherapy fatigue by 31% in people with various types of cancer. 

• In 2005, another preliminary study of breast cancer patients in Sweden showed that acupuncture reduced hot flashes by half.

Maddie had recommended acupuncture to treat neuropathy if I was placed in Arm A, but even when I was placed in Arm B her attitude was that it could still be helpful - and if nothing else it's a good rest. So last Wednesday I went to the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, where doctors with training in both western medicine and TCM treat patients for a variety of conditions, including cancer.

I was seen by Dr. Felicia Yu, yet another young female doctor who I immediately identified with and felt comfortable. She conducted a lengthy interview which covered my physical health, exercise and dietary habits, and emotional well-being (Question: "Are you stressed?" Answer: "Well, I have cancer, so..."). I gave her all the details about my cancer and also about life with a newborn. She then examined my tongue - I had never heard this before, but it turns out that in TCM, the tongue acts as a kind of proxy for other body parts, and its appearance provides strong visual indications about a person's overall harmony or disharmony. My tongue, it seems, shows that there is excess heat in my body, which is to be expected with cancer, infection, or other types of illness. She finished with a physical exam, which confirmed what I already knew - that I carry a lot of tension in my shoulders and neck. This again Dr. Yu attributed to excess heat in my body, rising up from the site of my cancer. Based on this, she recommended a combination of trigger point injections and acupuncture, every two weeks, and daily self-acupressure.

Trigger point injection is a procedure in Western medicine used to treat painful areas of muscle that contain trigger points, or knots of muscle that form when muscles do not relax. In the procedure, a health care professional inserts a small needle into the patient's trigger point. The injection can contain a local anesthetic, saline, or Vitamin B-12. With the injection, the trigger point is made inactive and the pain is alleviated. We did four of these first, at the base and top of my neck on the left and right sides. 

Then we did the acupuncture treatment. I've had acupuncture before, so there were no surprises - tiny needles inserted into my feet and legs, hands and arms, and forehead. A few of the needles hurt a little, but mostly they were undetectable. I spent 15 minutes lying in the darkened room, listening to my breathing, then a nurse came in and removed the needles, and my first treatment was done.

It's hard for me to say whether either the acupuncture or the trigger point injections really made a difference. I haven't experienced any nausea or stomach upset since I had them, but as more time has elapsed since my chemo, it's to be expected that the side effects would have died down anyway (and they really were very mild to start out with). At this point, I would have to agree with Maddie - I don't know if it helps, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I do like the idea of doing things to promote my body's wellness, as opposed to chemo and surgery, which are so much more narrowly focused on the eradication of my cancer and take a huge toll on the body as a whole.

Information from breastcancer.org and webmd.com.