(07-04-13) New research: Acupressure and yoga help serious heart problems

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

(NaturalNews) Have a serious heart rhythm problem and trying alternative and
complementary approaches to help? If so, the odds are you might well be told by
your mainstream doctor and even family and friends that those therapies are
"quackery" and you need to totally rely on Big Pharma drugs or surgery.
However, news from an international cardiology conference could hopefully
change those outdated opinions about therapies like acupressure and yoga.

Research just presented at the at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)
EuroHeart Care Congress being held in Glasgow, Scotland, reveals medical yoga
and acupressure reduce blood pressure and heart rates in patients in patients
with atrial fibrillation (AF), a quivering or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)
that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other serious
complications. An estimated 2.7 million Americans have AF, according to the
American Heart Association, and current standard treatments include drugs and
surgical interventions to try to alter the heart's electrical system -- but
they don't always keep AF at bay.

"One of the overall aims of treatment for AF is lowering heart rate because
high and irregular heart rates can lead to emboli forming and result in
stroke," Professor Ozlem Ceyhan, a nurse trainer from Erciyes University,
Kayseri, Turkey, said in a press statement. "In these studies both acupressure
and yoga are reducing heart rate, which should have a really beneficial effect.
Furthermore, both approaches have the advantage of being easy to administer and
cost effective, with no serious side effects."

Yoga helps AF that comes and goes
The ESC guidelines define paroxysmal AF (PAF) as episodes of the quivering
arrhythmia that self-terminate in less than seven days but reoccur. Maria
Nilsson, a nurse from Danderyd Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, who has practiced
yoga for the last 10 years, presented her research at the conference into
whether yoga might help patients with PAF. This kind of AF makes up between 25
percent and 62 percent of all cases of AF.

"We chose to use medical yoga, which is a form of yoga involving deep
breathing, light movements, meditation and relaxation. The advantage here is
that the movements are easy to learn and can be performed while sitting in a
chair," Nilsson told conference attendees.

For the study, 80 patients with diagnosed PAF were randomized to the usual
medical treatment plus yoga or just the usual treatment. Patients in the yoga
group attended hour long sessions of yoga classes one time a week, over a
period of three months. The results showed that after three months those in the
yoga group experienced significant decreases in both blood pressure and heart
rate compared to those in the control group. Heart rate and blood pressure
actually increased in the group not practicing yoga.

What's more, the patients who received yoga training showed improvements in
their physical quality of life and mental quality of life at three months,
compared to those in the control group. "Our study suggests doctors could do
worse than prescribing yoga for all patients with hypertension and fast heart
rates," said Nilsson. Her research team is now conducting more research to see
if reductions in blood pressure and heart rate halt the frequency of PAF
episodes.

Acupressure shows benefit in patients with persistent AF
In the second study, Professor Ozlem Ceyhan, a nurse trainer from Erciyes
University, Kayseri, Turkey, investigated the use of acupressure among patients
who were in the hospital due to persistent AF. 30 patients were in an
intervention group that received acupressure (performed on acupressure points
PC6, HT7 and CV17). Another group of 30 patients with non-stop AF were treated
with placebo therapy -- they were "treated" with a sham acupressure device that
was bound in place without applying pressure. Treatments, sham and real, were
performed between two and four times a day. Pulse and blood pressure readings
taken before, during and after the sessions and other information was collected
via patient questionnaires.

The patients in the acupressure group experienced significant decreases in
pulse rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to those allocated
to the placebo group. "One thing that was really notable in our study was that
we did not observe that any patients in the intervention group had further
attacks of AF while in hospital, compared to 10 percent of patients in the
placebo group suggesting acupressure may be preventing further attacks," Ceyhan
said in a statement to the media.

She added that acupressure was an easy to use technique that patients could
administer on themselves at home to reduce the frequency of AF attacks. Ceyhan
and her colleagues plan to investigate to see if other acupressure points would
have a beneficial effect on heart rhythm.

As Natural News has previously reported, some researchers have found that
acupressure may help cancer patients, too. For example, a study by Rochester
Medical Center researchers published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom
Management found acupressure wristbands appear to be a safe, low-cost way to
help cancer patients cut down on nausea when undergoing radiation, chemo and
other treatments.

Sources:

http://www.escardio.org
http://www.naturalnews.com/026053_acupressure_cancer_information.html
http://www.heart.org

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