Test Reveals the Effectiveness of Drugs and Acupuncture in Treatment of COPD

COPD or Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the least known of the top disease killers in the United States. It is the third leading cause of death, behind cardiovascular disease and cancer. Being a progressive disease, COPD just gets worse over time and conventional western medicine has no cure for it.

The Western modes of treatment for COPD include portable pharmaceutical oxygen bottles for the sufferer to breathe in, a cessation to smoking, and inhaler medications. Since there’s no cure for it, the management of COPD is the theme of the medical establishment. If all else fails, lung transplant is performed.

Occurring mostly among smokers, COPD can also be brought about by frequently inhaling toxic air from asbestos filaments or chemical pollutants that can also lead to permanent lung damage.

COPD is an umbrella term for diseases that include chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Asthma is not considered a form of COPD. Asthma often develops in children suffering from auto-immune allergies and is a much more manageable disease. Certain children with asthma that’s considered to be psychosomatic induced usually outgrow their condition. COPD, however, develops later in life, and it doesn’t need any auto-immune condition for it to come about, and as the sufferer ages, his/her COPD gets worse.

Common to all these lung disorders are the symptoms of wheezing, shortness of breath, and dyspnea. The coughing of COPD sufferers produces phlegm while asthma sufferers tend to have drier coughs. For most of their shared symptoms, there is crossover of toxic prescription drugs (not all of them are interchangeable though).

While COPD sufferers likely require oxygen bottles to breathe, among asthmatics, that contingency is rare. Besides the major differences in their mortality rate, minor differences in structure between asthma and COPD can be noticed.

There is no more lung airway elasticity in people with COPD and emphysema. The respiratory passages of sufferers of COPD and chronic bronchitis are thicker. People with asthma suffer from tightened bronchial tubes during attacks though this situation does not necessarily occur every day. The symptoms of COPD are chronic and sufferers experience them in varying degrees every day.

A Japanese Study Dealing with Acupuncture in Cleveland and COPD

A few years ago, the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine Respiratory Medicine Department in Japan did a placebo trial (double-blind) among 68 COPD sufferers comparing the effectiveness of placebo or sham acupuncture with medication with real acupuncture also with medication.

The trial lasted 12 weeks to which both real and sham acupuncture treatments were randomly administered once a week on the patients. Prior to and after the twelve week period, all subjects were subjected to a six-minute walk to test for DOE or “dyspenia on exertion”. A Borg scale was sued to compute the perceived exertion impact on the walk.

The conductors of the study found that the real acupuncture group showed higher Borg scores, suggesting their ability to exert and withstand more exercise, while manifesting lesser shortness of breath or DOE after the walk compared to sham/placebo group.

It was concluded that combined with conventional medical treatment, real acupuncture can be an effective adjunct for dyspenia.

Conclusion

Although noteworthy, this trial did not involve the use of TCM’s (Traditional Chinese Medicine’s) major tool: herbal remedies. Some practitioners of TCM heavily rely on acupuncture, but almost all combine the use of Chinese herbal medicine as well.

Certain Western supplements have shown the ability to resolve inflammation and clear out hardened tissues. One of these is a protease or proteolytic enzyme known as serrapeptase, derived from the silkworm.

Serrapeptase has the capacity to break down accumulations of mucus, inflamed scar tissues, and proteins. It is an affordable potent proteolytic enzyme which can significantly relieve the symptoms of COPD.