Mark Perren-Jones from the Haven Spa and Health Clinic, Boquete
Acupuncture best for back pain, new study shows.
A German study of over 1200 patients suffering from back pain has shown that acupuncture is more effective than conventional treatments. It is the largest and most rigorous study to date.
Every now and again I get people coming to me who think acupuncture is all a bunch of bollocks which always astounds me. It’s not the thousands of studies that have proven acupuncture works that astounds me and its not that the world health organization recommends over 100 different disorders that are treated successfully by acupuncture that astounds me. I have over 15 years of experience with treating clients with acupuncture so I have seen the results first hand. No, what astounds me is that these people who think acupuncture is all a load of hogwash are I guess totally oblivious to the fact that there are tens of thousands of practitioners throughout the world using acupuncture to treat disorders successfully every day in clinics, spas and hospitals. But even more than this little pearl of evidence, people have been using acupuncture for over 3000 years! Surely, if acupuncture was just one big bucket of baloney, wouldn’t you think lets say, hmmm, perhaps 2800 years ago or so someone would have said ‘ hey look, we have been doing this acupuncture stuff for 200 years now and it doesn’t work-lets go back to trying the butterfly worshipping idea again’. So for those of you who think acupuncture is a load of hooey, you are either wrong or for thousands of years, tens of thousands of practitioners have been getting duped into thinking this stuff works and I guess so are all of the millions of patients who have been helped by acupuncture. (And I won’t even get started on all of the peer reviewed double blind studies that prove acupuncture works).
In Germany, a six month study was done on over 1200 patients who showed that acupuncture proved more successful in treating back pain than conventional treatments. The participants met regularly with their doctors and had their pain measured on what is known as a pain scale. They also measured the amount of medication the patients needed. Almost half of the patients receiving acupuncture reported significant benefit as opposed to the 27 % in the conventional therapy group. Also, only 15% of the acupuncture group needed extra medication whilst 59% of the conventional therapy group needed extra. One very interesting fact in this study was that they also did ‘sham’ acupuncture. This means that they put needles into the body which are not classical acupoints and this group also had significant benefits in pain relief. Here’s what they said about this:
The fact that both the real and the fake forms of needle treatment had such a similar effect was surprising, said the study authors. It may be that the benefits of acupuncture have something to do with the way the body transmits or processes pain signals. Or it could be that the needles caused a “super placebo” effect, triggering a real reaction in the brain that changes the way the body perceives and responds to pain.
The study was funded by several insurance companies. As you can see, although acupuncture works, western medical science still is unable to explain exactly how it works even to this day. And really, if you are suffering from back pain or any kind of disorder for that matter and acupuncture fixes you-who cares?
As long as it works.