Need to Get Some Zzzzzzzs - Try Acupuncture!

When people come to our clinic we ask "How are you sleeping?" and we ask the question regardless of whether our patient's main concern is insomnia or not. The reason for this is that our bodies need adequate sleep not only to function day to day in the world, but also to repair at the cellular level. During deep sleep our immune system kicks into high gear to clean up bacteria and potentially harmful cells that our own body makes. No sleep = poor healing. Millions of Americans have some difficulty with sleeping. Either we can't fall asleep easily or we wake several times during the night for no apparent reason, or we've always been "light sleepers". According to a report published in the February 2004 issue of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (1) acupuncture is promising as a method of combating insomnia. In this small study each patient received acupuncture 2 times per week for 5 weeks. The results showed a decreased time in falling asleep, improvement in maintaining sleep, and a longer duration of stage 3 deep sleep. By the conclusion of the study most patients experienced decreased day time fatigue and anxiety.

(1) D. Warren Spence, M.A., Leonid Kayumov, Ph.D., DABSM, Adam Chen, Ph.D., Alan Lowe, M.D., Umesh Jain, M.D., Martin A. Katzman, M.D., Jianhua Shen, M.D., Boris Perelman, Ph.D. and Colin M. Shapiro, MBBCh, Ph.D., FRCP(C) Acupuncture Increases Nocturnal Melatonin Secretion and Reduces Insomnia and Anxiety: A Preliminary Repor, Journal of Neurospsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, February 2004.