Acupuncture for High Blood Pressure? No!

Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners frequently offer acupuncture or acupressure as remedies for high blood pressure. This is usually combined with the use of herbs and other traditional methods, which together may prove effective. Indeed, some small clinical studies have demonstrated measurable effectiveness of acupuncture in treating hypertension. However, no large, well-conducted, controlled clinical studies have been published in the medical literature. This has now been remedied.

The journal Hypertension contains a report from the New England Research Institutes describing a study in almost 200 patients with untreated high blood pressure. They were randomly assigned to receive standardized acupuncture at preselected points, individualized traditional Chinese acupuncture, or sham acupuncture (needle puncture at non-acupuncture sites). There were 12 treatment sessions spread over 6 to 8 weeks. The average drop in blood pressure from baseline over 10 weeks was the same for each treatment group – about 3.7 mmHg systolic and 3.5 mmHg diastolic pressures.

This study shows that active acupuncture (individualized traditional or standardized) provided no greater benefit than sham acupuncture in reducing blood pressure. As an expert comments: “The money and effort expended in this trial should save even more wasted money and ineffectual effort. Acupuncture is receiving a number of proofs of inadequacy, but it may turn out that science cannot trump 2500 years of Asian tradition.”