A mainstay of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture has been used as a form of treatment for thousands of years. Despite its impressive history, little research has been done into the use of this ancient medical art as a treatment for erectile dysfunction, which itself is an ailment as old as man.
A study conducted in the late 1990s produced less than impressive results. An electrically enhanced version of acupuncture was tested in a group of 16 patients, all of whom were diagnosed with ED, according to an account of the study published in the February 1999 issue of the “International Journal of Impotence Research.”
Electric Stimulation Added
Over a period of four weeks, patients were subjected to twice-weekly treatment sessions during which acupuncture needles were inserted into the same eight acupoints. Four of the eight needles were hooked up to an electronic stimulator that sent low-frequency electrical stimulation to the same four acupoints throughout the treatment period.
The erectile profiles and sexual activity of the study participants were tracked for a total of 12 weeks — four weeks before treatment began, the four-week treatment period, and the four weeks following treatment. Slight improvements in the quality of erections were observed in 39 percent of the patients.
A more recent study looked at the effect of acupuncture on a small group of men suffering from ED of psychological origin. Published in the October 2003 issue of the “International Journal of Impotence Research,” that study documented slightly improved erection quality in just over two-thirds of the patients studied.
Taken together, these two very small-scale studies seem to offer little evidence that acupuncture will ever be considered a treatment of choice for male impotence.
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