Hello readers!

Today I’m going to talk a bit on the benefits of Acupuncture in patients that suffer from Kidney Failure.

In Chinese Medicine, kidney failure is defined as a kidney inability of filtering blood with the purpose of eliminating substances that might be toxic to the body when in huge concentrations on the blood, like for example urea and creatinine. A change in the normal behavior of the kidney can happen due to dehydration, sepsis or kidney damage caused by presence of stones on these organs (https://www.tuasaude.com/insuficiencia-renal)

In Chinese Medicine, besides the reasons already mentioned by Occidental Medicine that cause kidney failure, there are also other reasons that might take the Kidney to it’s weakness, they are:

• Overwork without proper resting
• Overdoing physical activities or having a sedentary lifestyle
• Excess of sexual activity / pregnancy and successive births
• Bad eating habits
• Emotional stress

Kidney Failure is a severe disease and may result in death. In Occidental Medicine it’s usually treated with medications and, in more severe cases, with hemodialysis.

What can Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine do for the patient who suffers from Kidney Failure?

In fact, Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine cannot revert a Kidney Failure condition, but for sure there are benefits on this technique.

According to Jung-Sheng Yu e cols (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2016.0119) acupuncture applied on points LI4, ST36 and KI3  associated to electrotherapy of 2HZ, once a week, for 12 weeks in a row, reduced the concentration of creatinine and raised the glomerular filtration rate for chronic kidney patients.

Alencar Melo e cols. (https://www.scielo.br/j/reben/a/TLGQjkFqPNm7VCH3DsBzBWj/?lang=en&format=html) made a systematic revision of articles that comprove that acupuncture improves life quality, fatigue and sleep in chronic kidney patients. In the presented articles, the most utilized points were: KI1, KI3, KI11, HT7, ST36, SP6, LI4 and GB34.

When we think about kidney failure, we should also think about improving both the structure of the kidney (Yin) and its function (Yang). Using this line of thought, some points can certainly be regarded as a treatment to improve the patient’s life quality and assist on the actions of medications, such as decreasing the need of dialysis (and not replacing it).

Thinking this way, we may use:

• KI3 – balance the Yin and Yang energies of the Kidney
• KI6 – tone Kidney’s Yin 
• KI7 – tone Kidney’s Yang
• BL23, B52 – balances the Kidneys Yin and Yang energies 
• GV4 – tone Kidney’s Yang 
• CV4 – tone Kidney’s Yin 

We may not be able to heal a patient that suffers from Kidney Failure, but surely we can improve the quality and life time of the patient.

Hope you enjoyed it.

A big hug!

Profa. Fernanda Mara