Word: painful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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None of the patients in any of the groups knew which treatment they were receiving; all were blindfolded and lay face down with their head in a face cradle when the treatments were given. Each patient received 10 treatments over seven weeks. A control group of similar back-pain patients were told to continue doing whatever it was they did to relieve their pain, whether it was taking over-the-counter pain relievers or using massage or chiropractic services. The acupuncture patients were also allowed to continue using pain relievers if they were already taking them. (Read about...
Cherkin and his team followed up with the patients at eight weeks, 26 weeks and a year after their sessions to find out how much pain they were experiencing. After eight weeks, twice the number of patients getting any type of acupuncture - whether it was customized, standard or sham - reported improvements in their ability to function, such as walking or going up and down steps without pain, compared with those sticking with traditional care. That improvement was expected, to a certain extent, since physicians are increasingly aware that acupuncture does have physiological effects on the body. "There...
More surprising was the fact that all three acupuncture services, including the sham version with toothpicks, had about the same effect on pain reduction. It's worth remembering that the toothpicks were used at the same points involved in the standard acupuncture treatment - that is, practitioners were not pricking their patients at random. A year after the treatments, all of the acupuncture patients reported an average 63% improvement in pain relief, while half of the untreated patients reported feeling better. "Everyone agrees that acupuncture is having some physiological effect. But we still don't understand how it might be working...
...findings raise at least two possible explanations. Since the sham procedure used the same acupuncture points as the legitimate therapy, there may be something about the stimulation of those points, even without skin penetration, that triggers a beneficial physiological reaction in the body and the nervous system, leading to pain relief. (This may be the mechanism behind acupressure, which involves pressing certain points on the body to alter physiological processes occurring deep inside organs.) Or the patients' improvement may be due simply to a powerful placebo effect, in which the mere belief that you are receiving a new pain-relieving...
Since most back patients seek help when they're experiencing extreme pain, fast-acting acupuncture may be a reasonable option for them. A year ago, experts at the American College of Physicians and the American Pain Society sanctioned it when they included acupuncture in their recommended treatments for back-pain sufferers. "This study is consistent with those recommendations that if pain relievers aren't helping you, then acupuncture is a reasonable choice," says Nahin...