Bell's palsy, a type of facial paralysis, is likely caused by a virus but taking antiviral medications alone is unlikely to help, a new review suggests.

Acupuncture to treat Bell's palsy is one of the most commonly used methods in China. There are a variety of acupuncture treatment options to treat Bell's palsy in clinical practice. Since Bell's palsy has three different path-stages (acute stage, resting stage and restoration stage), so whether acupuncture is effective in the different path-stages and which acupuncture treatment is the best method are major issues in acupuncture clinical trials about Bell's palsy.

Bell's palsy or idiopathic facial palsy is an acute facial paralysis due to inflammation of the facial nerve. A number of studies published in China have suggested acupuncture is beneficial for facial palsy.

But,Does acupuncture really help bell's palsy? Any special technique need?

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, facial paralysis is known as 'deviated mouth'. It was attributed to 'wind' by past dynasties. 'Qi' refers to the vital substances comprising the human body and the physiological functions of viscera and bowels, channels and collaterals. It maintains life activities and reflects the resistance of the human body. Deficiency of 'qi' allows the invasion of exogenous pathogenic wind.

New research showed:Harmful side effects were not reported in any of the trials. Flaws in study design or reporting and clinical differences between trials prevented conclusions about the efficacy of acupuncture. but they said:The quality of the included trials was inadequate to allow any conclusion about the efficacy of acupuncture. More research with high quality trials is needed.

So,I think :the reason of acupuncture help bell's palsy is inflammtion relief of facial nevers due to acupuncture help circulation.....

What's your opinion?

The utilization rate of the acupoints selected by facial thermogram in the test group was in order of Dicang (ST 4, 92.3%), Yingxiang (LI 20, 90.6%), Taiyang (EX-HN 5, 85.5%), Yangbai (GB 14, 76.6%), Quanliao (SI 18, 72.3%), and so on. In conclusion, acupuncture at the acupoints selected by thermogram for treatment of facial paralysis in the cured rate, the therapeutic course and sessions of acupuncture is significantly superior to acupuncture at the conventionally selected acupoints, and the thermogram-aided acupoint selection method is beneficial to objectivity and modernization of acupoint selection for acupuncture and moxibustion treatments.

(2)

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Referrence:Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2007 Oct 17;(4):CD002914
(2)Am J Chin Med. 2007;35(6):967-75

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Acupoints options are Dicang (ST4), Xiaguan (ST7), Jiache (ST6), Chengjiang (CV24), Yingxiang (LI20), Quanliao (SI18), Yifeng (TE17), Yangbai (GB14), Sibai (ST2), Fengchi (GB20), Shuigou (GV26), Yuyao (EX-HN4) and Hegu (LI4). Manual stimulation or electro-acupuncture combined with moxibustion is recommended. Moreover, the suggested duration of acupuncture treatment refers to once a day, 10 times for each course, 2 to 5 days as courses interval, and 20 to 40 treatments in total.reference:Am J Chin Med. 2009;37(1):35-43