Acupuncture can help individuals with Job’s syndrome

I found a recent scientific paper that demonstrated that acupuncture can decrease the severity of symptoms for individuals with Job’s syndrome. How cool is that?

Both my husband and I regularly see an acupuncturist as part of our wellness program. I love acupuncture for relaxation, stress management and for balancing out my energies.

Since Moses is only four years old, he’s too young for acupuncture, but he’s not too young for acupressure!  We’ve stimulated some acupressure points in the past based on recommendations from our acupuncturist friend and couple of naturopaths that we’ve consulted with, and the truth is that we haven’t stuck with it over the longterm. Now that we know that there is evidence that it can specifically help with symptom management for individuals with Job’s syndrome, we might be more likely to remember to massage a few acupressure points.

Conveniently, we have a friend who is an acupuncturist, and based on Moses’ symptoms, he told us that we can massage the following four acupressure points daily:

1. thumb whirl (i.e., his thumb fingerprint) – 100 clockwise rotations on both hands – this is good for his digestion;
2. ring finger whirl – 100 clockwise rotations on both hands – this is good for his lungs/skin;
3. pinkie finger whirl – 100 clockwise rotations on both hands – this is good for his kidney meridian; and
4. stomach 36 – 3 “cun” (the width of four of Moses’ fingers put together) below the outer knee cap dimple – kneed it back and forth for 3-5 minutes – this is good for digestion. See this diagram for the exact location and what the point is good for.

I’ll let you know how it goes!

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J Altern Complement Med. 2011 Jan;17(1):71-6. Epub 2011 Jan 5. Acupuncture for symptom management in patients with hyper-IgE (Job’s) syndrome. Ge AX, Ryan ME, Holland SM, Freeman AF, Anderson VL, Wang F, Fleshman JW. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of acupuncture treatment for symptom management in patients with hyper-immunoglobulin E (IgE) syndrome (HIES).

DESIGN: This was a retrospective case series.

SETTING/LOCATION: The study was conducted at the The Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health.

SUBJECTS: There were 8 adult patients with HIES ages 23-56 with varying symptoms in the study.

INTERVENTION: Acupuncture treatments were given from May 29, 2001 to February 17, 2009.

OUTCOME MEASURES: Acupuncture treatment efficacy was measured and evaluated using a 0-10 assessment instrument pre- and post-treatment.

RESULTS: The 8 patients with HIES suffered from a wide variety of symptoms related to the disease. Acupuncture treatments uniformly decreased the self-reported severity of symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS: This case series demonstrates that acupuncture is a clinically useful and safe therapy for symptom management in patients with HIES.