Ménière’s disease usually causes tinnitus and dizziness. Acupuncture sessions would be effective in reducing these symptoms, in addition to traditional treatments.
- Ménière’s disease causes hearing symptoms and dizziness.
- Acupuncture could reduce these different manifestations of the pathology.
- This traditional Chinese medicine technique consists of applying pressure, for example with needles, to certain areas of the body.
Needles or suction cups placed on different parts of the body, or even pressure on specific places: acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine technique. It is used in particular to treat chronic pain, to help with withdrawal in cases of addiction or to relieve depression. In a new study, published in Frontiers in MedicineChinese researchers show that it could be effective in relieving the symptoms of Ménière’s disease.
Acupuncture: what is Ménière’s disease?
This pathology is characterized by dizziness, ringing in the ears and decreased hearing. This manifests itself in the form of seizures that can last several hours. “The cause of Ménière’s disease is an imbalance in the pressure of fluids contained in the inner ear, for reasons that remain poorly understood.“, specifies the site Vidal. As recalled Orphanetto the extent that the precise cause of Ménière’s disease is not known with certainty and it can develop very differently from one person to another, there is no treatment capable of curing this pathology definitively. “However, several therapeutic measures make it possible to limit the symptoms and live better with this disease, completes the site. The treatment aims on the one hand to treat the dizzy attack and on the other hand to reduce the frequency and intensity of the attacks (background treatment).”
What are the effects of acupuncture on the symptoms of Ménière’s disease?
The teams from Nanjing Universities and Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine emphasize that the treatments are not effective in all patients. Given its “serious impact on the physical and mental health of patients”they remind us that therapeutic alternatives are necessary. In their work, they reviewed different research carried out on the effects of acupuncture on the symptoms of the disease. Based on six studies, researchers found that treating Meniere’s disease with acupuncture or acupuncture combined with Western medicine was superior to Western medicine alone in terms of effectiveness rates. Compared to control, acupuncture also reduced dizziness, tinnitus effects and improved audiometry score.
Future work on acupuncture in the treatment of Ménière’s disease?
According to them, acupuncture can reduce symptoms of vertigo, tinnitus, full ear sensation and hearing loss in patients with the condition. “However, due to the lack of literature included in this study and methodological weaknesses (…), better designed long-term follow-up clinical studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture.”they warn.
