A small 2008 study published in Medical Acupuncture reported that acupuncture significantly reduced the pain associated with trigeminal neuralgia for 11 out of 12 study participants.
One participant required only two acupuncture treatments to completely relieve the pain, while the remaining 10 participants required between three and nine treatments to achieve complete relief.
Researchers at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City reported that a combination of Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture greatly reduced the severity of symptoms in eczema patients in a recent study.
All but one patient saw at least a 60% improvement in eczema severity after a little more than three months of treatment. Additionally, all but one experienced a 50% increase in a quality of life after about two and a half months of treatment.
The US military has begun using acupuncture to help ease pain… and the results are astonishing!
Check it out: Battlefield Acupuncture
A joint MIT-Harvard study reports that acupuncture has an effect beyond placebo in relieving pain.
The study, published in the November 2008 issue of Behavioral Brain Research, utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the effects of acupuncture versus “sham acupuncture” in relieving pain.
The study found that subjects receiving real acupuncture experienced significantly greater pre- and post-treatment pain reductions compared to the placebo group. In addition to the subjects’ reports, brain scans revealed increased brain activity and opioid release during the real acupuncture.
Researchers are still unclear just how acupuncture achieves its effects, but it is clear that acupuncture is more than just a sugar pill.
A new study conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers reports that acupuncture is more effective than medication in reducing the severity and frequency of chronic headaches.
The Duke meta-analysis pooled results from more than 30 pervious studies, with nearly 4,000 participants, comparing acupuncture to medication. They found that 62 percent of the acupuncture patients reported headache relief compared to only 45 percent of people taking medication. These acupuncture patients also reported better physical well-being compared to the medication group.
