Equine Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a treatment method for all species developed by the Chinese over the last 2,000 years. As a very practical people, they discovered that they could stimulate healing within the body by stimulating certain special points, “acupoints”, with needles. They believe that energy, or Qi (pronounced ‘Chi’) circulates around the body maintaining the health of all tissues. When this Qi is blocked, disease flourishes. These blockages can occur through trauma, scars or through exposure to ‘pathogenic factors’ such as wind, damp and cold. Acupuncture is one of an array of treatments used in Traditional Chinese Medicine such as herbs, moxibustion (heating acupoints with a point heat source) and dietary modification.
Modern Western Medicine has come to similar conclusions through the scientific route. If you have poor blood circulation in the body, this can lead to fibrositis in the muscles, angina and cardiac arrest in the heart and strokes in the brain. Western medicine uses expensive drugs to combat these effects where the Chinese would use needles and herbs. Needling carefully chosen acupoints has been shown scientifically to release morphine-like substances called ‘endorphins’ and to change the way the brain and the nervous system recognises an area of disease. It is as if the acupuncture has a re-educating effect on the body which is dealing badly with healing a limb or organ.
Waking up of the immune system, the circulatory system and focussing this new activity through carefully repeated needling seems to be the overall effect of acupuncture. It must be said that the Traditional Chinese Medicine approach can often work better than the high tech scientific approach! This is especially true when dealing with longstanding disease.
Modern equine acupuncture is used mainly for musculoskeletal problems. Where the common veterinary approach to lameness is to use box rest and bute (phenylbutazone) alone to allow healing to take place, acupuncture can enhance and speed up the healing process.
If you have a horse who goes lame, however, an initial work-up by a veterinary surgeon is essential. It would be poor medicine to just wade in with acupuncture (or any type of treatment) until surgical problems such as broken bones or severed tendons had been eliminated. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, in their Guide to Professional Conduct (available online to the public on www.rcvs.org), states that only a veterinary surgeon trained in acupuncture can treat animals with needles.
Acupuncture, after an initial veterinary assessment, is very useful in musculoskeletal conditions. Tendon and ligament sprains and other soft tissue healing can be significantly speeded. Degenerative joint disease, arthritis or rheumatic problems can also be helped. These conditions are always a battle between destructive and regenerative processes; acupuncture helps to tip the balance away from the destructive pathways to more favour regeneration.
Neck and back problems such as the so-called ‘cold back’ syndrome, rigidity or napping when tightening the girth strap can benefit enormously from acupuncture too, as anyone who’s seen an acupuncturist for their bad back will testify. I would always use acupuncture in conjunction with manipulation such as osteopathy or chiropractic carried out by a trained practitioner. Remember that horses were not designed to carry people around on their backs, any more than humans were meant to wear high heels or sit in front of computer terminals all day long.
Finding a veterinary acupuncturist is not hard. The best plan is to contact the Association of British Veterinary Acupuncturists by visiting their website www.abva.co.uk. They will be able to send you an information pack with the names and addresses of the local practice with a specialist interest in acupuncture. If you have any more specific problem that you would like an answer to, please write to me at Horse Magazine and I would be pleased to reply in the question and answer pages.
Website: www.holisticvet.co.uk
<<back to index of NAG articles