Hot flashes – the bane of existence for many women during menopause – can be reduced in frequency by almost half for about 50 percent of women over eight weeks of acupuncture treatment, a new study finds.

Hot flashes are sudden, temporary onsets of body warmth, flushing and sweating, often experienced by women going through menopause.

Previous research has found that acupuncture may be helpful so this National Institutes of Health-funded study was designed evaluate different patterns of response to the treatment.

Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C. recruited a group of 209 women, age 45 to 60 who had on average at least four hot flashes or night sweats per day. The group included both perimenopausal and postmenopausal participants. They randomized to receive up to 20 acupuncture treatments within six months or to a control group.

Of the 170 women who received acupuncture, a small group of women (11.9 percent) had an 85 percent reduction in hot flashes by the eighth week of the study. Forty-seven percent of the study group reported a 47 percent reduction over this same time frame. However, 37 percent showed only a minimal reduction of 9.6 percent in frequency of hot flashes, while 4 percent reported a 100 percent increase in hot flashes, the researchers say.

“Women bothered by hot flashes and night sweats may want to give acupuncture a try as a relatively low-cost, low-risk treatment,” says Nancy Avis, lead author of the study, which appears in Menopause.

Also women should be able to tell pretty quickly if acupuncture will benefit them, she says, adding that those who did saw a reduction in their hot flashes beginning after about three to four weeks of weekly treatments.