A new study into the effects of Acupuncture has revealed that there can be hardly any better ways of curing arthritis, migraines and chronic pains in the body than acupuncture. Firm evidence has been established in supporting acupuncture as an effective treatment for neck and shoulder pain, osteoarthritis and other chronic pain according to this article. You can get substantial pain relief with acupuncture, which has long been proven through the ages. Questions have always remained about the efficacy of this ancient method of treatment. Recently, after deeply analyzing the previous findings and collecting raw data, reliable conclusions have been reached regarding how this treatment actually works.

Pain Relief With Acupuncture

Low back pain is the second biggest complaint doctors hear. Acupuncture may be an age old solution to an old problem.

 
A new study of acupuncture — the most rigorous and detailed analysis of the treatment to date — found that it can ease migraines and arthritis and other forms of chronic pain.

 

The findings provide strong scientific support for an age-old therapy used by an estimated three million Americans each year. Though acupuncture has been studied for decades, the body of medical research on it has been mixed and mired to some extent by small and poor-quality studies. Financed by the National Institutes of Health and carried out over about half a decade, the new research was a detailed analysis of earlier research that involved data on nearly 18,000 patients.

 

The researchers, who published their results in Archives of Internal Medicine, found that acupuncture outperformed sham treatments and standard care when used by people suffering from osteoarthritis, migraines and chronic back, neck and shoulder pain.

 

“This has been a controversial subject for a long time,” said Dr. Andrew J. Vickers, attending research methodologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the lead author of the study. “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.”

 

Acupuncture, which involves inserting needles at various places on the body to stimulate so-called acupoints, is among the most widely practiced forms of alternative medicine in the country and is offered by many hospitals. Most commonly the treatment is sought by adults looking for relief from chronic pain, though it is also used with growing frequency in children. According to government estimates, about 150,000 children in the United States underwent acupuncture in 2007.

 

But for all its popularity, questions about its efficacy have long been commonplace. Are those who swear by it experiencing true relief or the psychological balm of the placebo effect?

 

Dr. Vickers and a team of scientists from around the world — England, Germany, Sweden and elsewhere — sought an answer by pooling years of data. 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.

 

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Random studies on the effectiveness of Acupuncture have been conducted to find out the truth behind its success relating to the actual principles based on which this treatment has been found to provide relief to chronic back pain. Through intensive scrutiny, it has been possible to correct methodological and statistical problems relating to previous studies helping in the process to actually determining the function of Acupuncture.
 
Pain relief with Acupuncture is an established fact, and it is sure to provide long-term relief as it has done through the ages, as a most viable form of alternative treatment for chronic pain and migraines. Sticking needles in you, allows you to alleviate pain.

In acupuncture, there are several points that can be used when treating low back pain. Find out how to treat health problems through alternative medicine with help from an acupuncture physician in this video on acupuncture and back pain. By Robert Linde – Herbalist & Acupuncturist from St. Petersburg Florida.

This video explains how acupuncture can relieve pain through trigger point therapy. Erika Weber MS, L.Ac of 16thStreetAcupuncture.com explains how muscle fibers can form trigger points and how active trigger points can affect not only the area but different parts of the body.