Acupuncture successfully treats migraines and chronic pain

Acupuncture successfully treats migraines and chronic pain, according to most rigorous study of the treatment to date



(NaturalNews) Once thought by many to be of questionable value, the most
complete, detailed and rigorous study of acupuncture to date has found
that the procedure can relieve chronic pain, as well as the pain of
migraines and arthritis, according to a report by The New York Times.

The
latest findings underscore previous scientific data that the timeless
therapy used by an estimated three million Americans annually is of
immense value to pain sufferers.

The value of acupuncture has
been examined for many years, but some of the results of those studies
have provided researchers and scientists a mixed and mired picture
regarding its benefits. That is due in large part to the fact that most
of those studies were either small or of poor quality.

But the new research, financed by the National Institutes of Health and
conducted over a period of years, "was a detailed analysis of earlier
research that involved data on nearly 18,000 patients," the paper
reported.

'Acupuncture is an effective treatment for pain'

Researchers, who published their results in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine,
found that acupuncture performed better than sham treatments and
standard car when utilized by patients suffering from migraines, chronic
back, neck and shoulder pain, and osteoarthritis.

"In the
primary analysis, including all eligible RCTs (randomized controlled
trials), acupuncture was superior to both sham and no-acupuncture
control for each pain condition," said a summary of the study's results.
"After exclusion of an outlying set of RCTs that strongly favored acupuncture, the effect sizes were similar across pain conditions."

"Acupuncture
is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a
reasonable referral option. Significant differences between true and
sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo," the
researchers concluded.

"This has been a controversial subject for
a long time," Dr. Andrew J. Vickers, attending research methodologist
at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the lead
author of the study, told the paper. "But when you try to answer the
question the right way, as we did, you get very clear answers.

"We think there's firm evidence supporting acupuncture for the treatment of chronic pain," he said.

For
those who are not familiar with the procedure, acupuncturists use
small, sterilized needles, inserted at various places on the body to
stimulate acupoints, which in turn produce a variety of results. It's
one of the most widely practiced forms of alternative medicine in the
U.S. and it is increasingly offered by many hospitals.

Most often, adults seek out acupuncture in search of relief from chronic pain,
though the procedure is being increasingly applied to children,
according to statistics. Government estimates put the number of children
undergoing acupuncture treatments at about 150,000 in 2007, the Times reported.

Despite
its growing popularity; however, there are still questions about its
effectiveness - questions that have surrounded acupuncture for years.
Specifically, those who question its efficacy wonder if the procedure
truly relieves pain or if patients are experiencing a psychological
effect.

Extensive research looked at most available data

Vickers,
along with a team of scientists from around the world, including
England, Sweden, and Germany, wanted to know the answers to those
questions, so they sought out years of data and pooled the results.
According to the Times:

Rather than averaging the
results or conclusions from years of previous studies, a common but less
rigorous form of meta-analysis, Dr. Vickers and his colleagues first
selected 29 randomized studies of acupuncture that they determined to be
of high quality. Then they contacted the authors to obtain their raw
data, which they scrutinized and pooled for further analysis. This
helped them correct for statistical and methodological problems with the
previous studies, allowing them to reach more precise and reliable
conclusions about whether acupuncture actually works.

That
process took nearly six years. "Replicating pretty much every single
number reported in dozens of papers is no quick or easy task," said
Vickers.

In the end, though, Vickers and his colleagues found
that at the completion of their treatment, about half of patients who
underwent true acupuncture said their conditions improved, compared to
about 30 percent of patients who did not undergo it.

"There were
30 or 40 people from all over the world involved in this research, and
as a whole the sense was that this was a clinically important effect
size," Vickers said, adding that acupuncture "is relatively noninvasive
and relatively safe."

Source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/037428_acupuncture_chronic_pain_migraines.html