After musculoskeletal problems such as arthritis, gastrointestinal conditions are among the problems most commonly treated with traditional Chinese veterinary medicine. An ever-increasing amount of scientific research shows that acupuncture and other Chinese medical therapies have genuine, beneficial effects on the stomach and intestines and in a wide variety of gastrointestinal problems.
Acupuncture has a variety of beneficial effects on the gastrointestinal tract. Studies in both humans and animals show that acupuncture can:
- Normalize gastrointestinal motility
- Relieve abdominal pain
- Improve gastrointestinal motility after anesthesia in horses
- Reduce nausea and vomiting
- Normalize gastrointestinal blood flow
- Resolve diarrhea
- Resolve gastric and duodenal ulceration
These effects mean that acupuncture can help a wide variety of gastrointestinal problems in animals. For example, diarrhea can occur for numerous reasons, including eating inappropriate or spoiled food, infections, colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, kidney disease and more. Acupuncture has been widely studied in China for treatment of diarrhea in pigs (China is home to an estimated 700 million pigs, over half the world's pig population!). In piglets with diarrhea due to infection with E. coli, acupuncture is typically curative in around 80% of piglets. Similar responses have been seen in human babies, and acupuncture has also been shown to be effective for diarrhea due to ulcerative colitis and other conditions in animals.
Chinese herbal medicine is a great complement to acupuncture for gastrointestinal conditions. As with acupuncture, scientific studies have shown that Chinese herbal medicines have genuine beneficial effects on the gastrointestinal tract, for example relieving abdominal pain, reducing diarrhea, relieving gastric or intestinal ulceration and more.