Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medical technique that uses long needles.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – According to the latest study, fibromyalgia pain could be eased with acupuncture. The news brings hopefulness to patients who are trying to steer clear from the addiction-causing pain killers. The acupuncture technique is becoming more and more popular among patients.
The lead researcher in the cited study, Jorge Vas of Seville’s Dona Mercedes Health Center, Spain announced that after ten weeks of treatment the patients that received acupuncture registered a drop of 41 percent in their pain scores. The approximate drop in the control group that was given a simulated treatment of acupuncture was of only 27 percent.
Dr. Vas says that the method of individualized acupuncture is a good and safe therapeutic option for fibromyalgia treatment.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic rheumatic pain which is usually associated with depression, insufficient sleep, and fatigue. The condition is mostly encountered in elderly women and it affects around 5 percent out of the total population.
An attending physician, the specialist in pain management and acupuncturist at the North Shore Manhasset University Hospital in New York, Alexander Rances, says that traditional medicine and acupuncture work together in the fibromyalgia treatment.
In Dr. Rances expert opinion the traditional Chinese approach must be combined with the more modern Western techniques in order to offer the patients the best care they could receive.
The usual course of treatment for the rheumatic disease is medication for nerve pain such as pregabalin. When the medication fails to offer a significant pain reduction, doctors consider adding acupuncture to the treatment.
In order to complete his study, Dr. Vas, and his team gathered 153 patients that suffered from fibromyalgia. Then they randomly assigned the patients individually tailored or simulated acupuncture treatments. The sessions lasted an average of 20 minutes and they were performed weekly.
After 9 weeks of treatment, the patients were asked to come back in a year for a pain score test. Some of them continued to take the prescribed medication that they were on before commencing the study.
The conclusions of the study were that fibromyalgia pain could be eased with acupuncture. The patients who received the individual treatment registered a 20 percent drop in their pain scores while those who received the simulated acupuncture sessions registered only an average drop of 6 percent.
The patient’s lives were also improved by the ancient Chinese method of treatment. Judging by the answers that the patients gave on the Impact Questionnaire of Fibromyalgia, their life improved with 35 percent after receiving the treatment, and 22 percent after one year. The control group only registered a 24.5, and respectively 5 percent improvements.
Fibromyalgia pain could be eased with acupuncture because the ancient Chinese method targets the nervous system. The technique calms the signals sent by the nervous signals to the body, thus lowering the levels of pain that a patient feels.
Image source: www.wikimedia.org
Tara Hamilton
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