Fall in High Blood Pressure after Applying Acupuncture to SHR

Abstract

Acupuncture is an excellent method to mollify complaints from the essential hypertensive human. We had devised a new method, aside from the old one, which gives physical stimulation only to the carotid sinus. This new method to reduce hypertension is that the acupuncture is applied as a cathodic electrode to the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and femoral regions on the right dorsal part of the body surface of the patient.We have tried a hundred cases suffering from hypertension (clinically diagnosed as the benign essential) and we have experienced most effective results in 53, moderately effective results in 35 and ineffective results in 12 cases. We tried to fi nd some objective proof for the effectiveness of the treatment by applying this technique to SHR.Among 22 adult SHR, 18 were treated and 4 were reserved as the non-treated control SHR. The technique of acupuncture was applied quite analogously to the case of human. Namely, exciting points were set at 1 unit on the cervical, 3 units on the thoracic, 2 units on the lumbar, and 1 unit on the femoral regions on the right dorsal part of the SHR body surface. The anodic electrode was fixed to the right instep and the cathodic electrode was applied to each region and was stimulated with low frequent current intermittently for 5 to 6 sec. During a 24-day period acupuncture with cathodic stimuli was given 5 times and blood pressure was recorded 9 times indirectly, from the tail of SHR.Before treatment, all SHR possessed high systolic blood pressure, over 200 mmHg. After treatment, all 18 SHR demonstrated a fall in systolic blood pressure, i.e. 3 became in the range of 141-150mmHg, 2 151-160mmHg, 9 161-170 mmHg, and 4 171-180mmHg.We consider that these preliminary results give us a promising indication for the modification of hypertension by acupuncture and we should plan further studies.