Word: reliefs
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Anyone who has suffered from back pain knows that when the throbbing gets bad enough, you'll try anything to find relief - heating pads, acupuncture, pain relievers, physical therapy, even poking yourself with toothpicks...
...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," says Nahin...
...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 treatment...
That's especially salient considering that the acupuncture groups in Cherkin's study experienced relief much faster than the non-acupuncture group. At eight weeks, 60% of the acupuncture patients reported improved symptoms, compared with 40% of the untreated group. At the end of a year, the same percentage of treated patients still experienced relief, while 50% of the untreated group experienced improved symptoms. (See pictures of holistic healing...
...only about a month left until Iran's presidential elections, as well as a generally positive mood among Iranians for better relations with the administration of President Obama, it appears that Saberi's case had become too much of a liability for Iran. Certainly, her release is an immense relief for her family and friends, but ironically, it also appears to be a relief for the Islamic Republic...