Using acupuncture

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 12

Using acupuncture

From

Dr George Honbury

for the Ooyal ilew Zealand College

of General Practitioners

Family Doctor

The “British Medical Journal” had a scientific paper recently on the efficacy of acupuncture in stopping vomiting.

One of the authors had been to China, and seen women at antenatal clinics instructed on how to prevent and treat morning sickness. They were shown how to stimulate the acupressure point Neiguan, the sixth point on the body meridian called Pericardium.

The point is five centimetres above the right wrist crease, between the two tendons. The authors were anaesthetists rather than obstetricians, so their interest was in treating or preventing the vomiting that often accompanies general anaesthetics. It

Nausea and vomiting were reduced very significantly in the group treated by needling Neiguan for five minutes, compared to a group which had no acupuncture, and when compared with a group that had “dummy acupuncture” applied to a non-acupuncture point.

® In spite of the fact that most schizophrenics smoke (more than 90 per cent in one survey) they die less often of lung cancer than non-schizo-phrenics. Maybe that is because more of them die accidentally or by suicide before they are old enough to get cancer, but just maybe there is something in being a schizophrenic that protects against cancer. It bears investigation. © Erythema ab igne means literally “redness from fire.” It describes the mottled, red or brown netlike rash that appears on the legs of elderly women who sit too close to the heater for too long. It is actually the appearance of lightly cooked skin. You can see

it in younger people who apply a hot water-bottle to a sore back or other area.

When it appears on places like the abdomen, the “Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine” suggests- that a cancer may be present.

® Breast feeding should become the established normal method of feeding babies, says the prestigious American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Human milk was the most appropriate nutrient for human infants, and conferred significant immunological protection on the child, it said. It was economical, convenient, helped the womb

go back to normal size after childbirth, and provided a degree of contraception. The nursing mother needed 500 to 1000 calories more in her diet than she did before she was pregnant. She can go on feeding if she is taking many medicines, including antibiotics, antipileptics, antihypertensives and anticoagulants. Breastfeeding should stop if the mother has a disease that is transmissible in milk: hepatitis, German measles, or A.I.D.S. A woman with active tuberculosis should not nurse. The breast is a functional organ, and in a number of countries a new branch of medicine has developed, specialising in the breast and its disorders, but most especially in the breast as another working part of the body with its own special function.