Acupuncture Treatment by Ray Sahelian, M.D. Acupuncture migraine Acupuncture fibromyalgia

Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese therapy has been shown to relieve nausea, stress, arthritis pain in the knee and pelvic pain during pregnancy. Recent studies indicate acupuncture may be beneficial in fibromyalgia, hot flashes, and migraine headache. Acupuncture treatment is considered in the category of alternative medicine in the US.

How Does Acupuncture treatment work?
Recent medical research has found that acupuncture treatment may work by altering signals among nerve cells or by affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system.

Subscribe to a FREE Supplement Research Update newsletter. Twice a month you will receive an email with reviews of several studies on various supplements and natural medicine topics, including acupuncture treatment, and their practical interpretation by Ray Sahelian, M.D.

Acupuncture and Low Back Pain
Feb 2006 - Acupuncture improves low back pain, compared with no treatment. However, minimal intervention consisting of superficial needle placement at non- acupuncture points resulted in similar improvements. Past studies have yielded inconclusive results concerning the effectiveness of acupuncture to treat lower back pain. German researchers tested 300 patients to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture for lower back pain. The patients were randomly assigned to "real" acupuncture treatment, "sham," or "minimal" acupuncture, or no acupuncture treatment. Real and minimal acupuncture consisted of 12 treatment sessions over 8 weeks. All subjects completed a pain questionnaire at 8, 26 and 52 weeks. After 8 weeks of treatment, pain intensity had decreased by 28 percent in the acupuncture group, 23 percent in the minimal acupuncture group, and 7 percent in the control group. At weeks 26 and 52, back pain was still reduced, with no significant differences between the full-acupuncture and the minimal-acupuncture group. Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, February 27, 2006.

September 2007 - Acupuncture, real or fake, leads to better improvements in chronic lower back pain than does standard treatment. Dr. Michael Haake, from the University of Regensburg in Bad Abbach, Germany completed trials that involved 1162 patients who had chronic lower back pain for an average of 8 years. They were randomly assigned to get real acupuncture, sham acupuncture, involving needling at non-acupuncture points; or conventional therapy with drugs, physical therapy, and exercise. The sessions were 30-minute long and two sessions were done for five weeks. Patients with a partial response to treatment -- a 10 to 50 percent drop in pain intensity -- were offered five more sessions. After 6 months, Dr. Michael Haake found the treatment response rate was higher in the acupuncture groups than in the other group. Archives of Internal Medicine, September 24, 2007.

Acupuncture and Low Back Pain, September 2006 study

The largest study to date of acupuncture for chronic low back pain has found the treatment eases the pain, improves back function and is cost effective. People are increasingly using complementary and alternative medicine to treat persistent low back pain, especially acupuncture. To compare the effectiveness and costs of acupuncture along with routine care for low back pain to routine care alone, researchers recruited 11,630 patients with chronic low back pain. Of these, 1,549 were randomly assigned to acupuncture and 1,544 to a control group. Patients in the control group were offered acupuncture after three months. The remaining 8,537 patients were included in a nonrandomized acupuncture group. Patients received up to 15 treatments over a three-month period, and were followed for an additional three months. At three months, patients treated with acupuncture showed significantly better back function, on average; 52 percent responded to treatment, compared to 26 percent of control patients.
Acupuncture was more costly than routine care for low back pain, but was deemed "cost-effective" in terms of the degree of improvement seen in patients' back function. American Journal of Epidemiology, September 1, 2006.

Acupuncture Fibromyalgia treatment
Fibromyalgia patients treated with six sessions of acupuncture experienced significant symptomatic improvement compared to a group given simulated acupuncture sessions.

Acupuncture migraine headaches
Acupuncture treatment, one of the most popular complementary treatments, works as well as standard drugs for migraines, German researchers have reported. They compared the effects of real and fake acupuncture with drug treatments for migraine and found all equally effective. All of the more than 900 patients who had been randomly selected to receive Chinese acupuncture, sham acupuncture or drugs reported similar improvements and reductions in the number of migraine-free days. Traditional Chinese acupuncture involves inserting fine needles at specific energy meridians of the body to reduce pain. In the so-called sham procedure the needles were put in places that were not traditional acupuncture points. Many patients with migraine try other therapies such as acupressure, homeopathy, osteopathy and physiotherapy.

Acupuncture for Chemotherapy induced nausea
Acupuncture treatment, in conjunction with the latest drugs to prevent nausea and vomiting, seems to help relieve chemotherapy-induced vomiting. Despite new drugs that control nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy (anti-emetics), many cancer patients still experience these unpleasant side effects, which can impair quality of life, cause emotional distress, and aggravate cancer-related symptoms such as weight loss, lethargy and weakness. The ancient Chinese technique of acupuncture, used to treat a variety of ailments by stimulating specific points on the body, has become increasingly popular for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.

Acupuncture for Hot Flashes
Acupuncture treatment may offer women an alternative for easing hot flashes during menopause. In a study of 29 women with frequent, daily hot flashes, those who received acupuncture began to have fewer and less severe symptoms during the night. As nighttime hot flashes improved, so did the quality of the women's sleep. Hot flashes are a common part of menopause, and women who get them often have difficulty getting a good night's sleep. Hormone replacement therapy is effective at quelling hot flashes, but given the risks of the therapy -- including increased risks of heart disease and breast cancer -- many women are interested in alternative treatments. There's some evidence that acupuncture affects hormones related to both sleep and menopause. Fertility & Sterility, September 2006.

Acupuncture and Blood Pressure
Standardized or individualized traditional Chinese acupuncture treatment is no better than a sham procedure in reducing blood pressure in people with hypertension. Findings from small clinical trials and studies of individual cases have suggested a benefit for acupuncture in treating hypertension, Dr. Eric A. Macklin and colleagues note in the medical journal Hypertension. However, until now, no data from large trials have been reported. The Stop Hypertension with the Acupuncture Research Program -- dubbed SHARP -- involved 192 subjects with untreated high blood pressure, which averaged about 149/93. Macklin, from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, and his team randomly assigned the participants to undergo standardized acupuncture at preselected points, individualized traditional Chinese acupuncture, or sham acupuncture -- that is, needle puncture at non-acupuncture sites. The subjects underwent up to 12 sessions over 6 to 8 weeks, and their blood pressure was monitored every 2 weeks for 10 weeks. The average drop in blood pressure from baseline to 10 weeks was similar in each group, with a decline of around 3 points in the upper and lower readings -- not enough to make much difference.

Acupuncture and osteoarthritis
Patients with chronic pain related to osteoarthritis experience clinical improvement with acupuncture treatment plus routine care. German researchers randomly assigned 632 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee or hip to undergo up to 15 sessions of acupuncture over a 3-month period or to a "control" group that got no acupuncture. A second group of 2921 patients did not consent to random placement, and all of these patients received acupuncture. The participants in both trials were allowed to continue on their usual treatment. After 3 months, greater improvements were seen in scores on a standardized osteoarthritis severity scale in the acupuncture group than in the control group, Dr. Claudia M. Witt, of Charite University Medical Center, Berlin, and colleagues report. Overall, 34.5 percent of the acupuncture group had a good response to treatment after 3 months, compared with 6.5 percent of the control group. Quality of life improvements were also more pronounced in the acupuncture group compared with the control group. Arthritis and Rheumatism, November 2006.

Acupuncture treatment emails
Q. I really enjoy your website (www.raysahelian.com) and was wondering if you could add to it your thoughts on acupuncture and chiropracty. I respect your opinion a lot, and fully appreciate the fact that you use actual published studies to support or refute various treatments.
   A. I have not studied acupuncture and chiropractic treatment enough to have the knowledge required to give an informed opinion.

Q. My acupuncture practitioner gave my Chinese herbs called cuscuta and also asked me to take curcumin capsules. Can both be taken together?
   A. One has to be careful with cuscuta since high doses can cause insomnia. Cuscuta is also known as dodder seed. Curcumin does not have that many side effects.

Q. I have had severe restless leg syndrome for about 15 years ( arms and legs ). I have gone to a sleep specialist that prescribed Requip and also Gabapentin to take in the evening. My symptoms have now invaded my afternoon hours and I have had to take a 1mg tablet to relieve the symptoms to get through the work day even though it makes me very tired. My question is , has there been any studies done as to the effectiveness of acupuncture for restless leg syndrome ? My symptoms have degraded my life and activities to a degree that is becoming unbearable.
   A. We did a search on Medline in Oct 2007 and found one study with no abstract provided, so we don't know.

Acupuncture treatment of restless leg syndrome. J Tradit Chin Med. 2001 Dec;21(4):312-6.

For additional links
Multivitamin information
Hoodia information