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Acupuncture for new mums
Getting back to full strength
Acupuncture for new mums can be a big help, and this is certainly a time when you could do with some help! Our culture tends to expect everyone to take a few weeks off, have a baby, and carry on pretty as if not much has really happened. In reality your body has been through an enormously taxing process, of growing another human being from scratch, going through the huge labour of childbirth, and then generating the milk to sustain your new baby's whole nutritional needs.
The challenges and sleep-deprivation of looking after a tiny baby can also mean that looking after yourself goes out of the window, just when you and your body could do with some help, support, nourishment, and tender loving care. Happily acupuncture for new mums may be able to help with:
Encouraging your post-partum
healing
Reducing pain and
inflammation from an episiotomy
Managing your after-pains
Building your energy (at a
time when you really need it!)
Promoting lactation
Reducing the pain and inflammation of mastitis
Improving post-natal depression or anxiety. This is a tough time
you're going through, most new mums find it hard going in some ways,
so if you're feeling low or anxious in yourself, you definitely
shouldn't be beating yourself up about it, and help is available.
Supporting your secondary fertility, see Jessica's page on
fertility
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Research |
A 2003 report by the World Health Organisation (WHO)(1) found deficient lactation of labour to be one of the conditions "for which acupuncture has been proved - through controlled trials - to be an effective treatment". Meanwhile a review(2) by the British Medical Journal described acupuncture as "very safe" when practiced by an appropriately-qualified practitioner.
The modern evidence base for acupuncture is incomplete, and this is true for a great many areas of conventional medicine too. The Clinical Evidence website of the British Medical Journal tells us that of the 2,500 conventional medical treatments their databases cover, 46% are of unknown effectiveness (as at October 2009)(3).
Jessica continues to witness the benefits of acupuncture for many people in her work, utilising the knowledge and practice of Chinese medicine built up over thousands of years. She's happy that more and more modern scientific research is being done into acupuncture, helping to bring it to a wider audience.
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Contact Jessica
Each of us responds differently to
acupuncture. Do
get in touch to discuss whether
acupuncture is likely to be right for you, or to make an appointment.
Other conditions
Acupuncture can help with a wide range of health problems, click below to find out more:
Detailed references
(1) http://www.acupuncture-schools.us/national-institute-health-nih-acupuncture.cfm, referring to World Health Organisation (2002). Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trial, see http://apps.who.int/bookorders/anglais/detart1.jsp?sesslan=1&codlan=1&codcol=93&codcch=196
(2) Rampes (2001). The safety of acupuncture. British Medical Journal 2001;323(7311):467 (1 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7311.467, see http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/323/7311/467
(3) From the 'About Us' area of the Clinical Evidence BMJ website, page titled 'How much do we know', http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp. Extract at Oct 2009: "So what can Clinical Evidence tell us about the state of our current knowledge? What proportion of commonly used treatments are supported by good evidence, what proportion should not be used or used only with caution, and how big are the gaps in our knowledge? Of around 2500 treatments covered 13% are rated as beneficial, 23% likely to be beneficial, 8% as trade off between benefits and harms, 6% unlikely to be beneficial, 4% likely to be ineffective or harmful, and 46%, the largest proportion, as unknown effectiveness"
© Jessica Kennedy 2005-09, all rights reserved