(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- New research shows the cure to your next headache
could come from a needle…not a pill!
Researchers found patients with headaches who were treated with acupuncture
therapy suffered fewer headaches compared to those who used painkillers. Among
migraine sufferers, acupuncture was also found to be superior to drug
treatments. However, when these patients were given fake acupuncture treatments,
they yielded the same positive results, raising questions among researchers.
"Much of the clinical benefit of acupuncture might be due to non-specific
needling effects and powerful placebo effects, meaning selection of specific
needle points may be less important than many practitioners have traditionally
argued," lead researcher Klaus Linde, with the Centre for Complementary Medicine
Research at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, was quoted as saying.
Dr. Linde says more research is still needed to truly understand the effects of
acupuncture before widely prescribing it to patients.
"Doctors need to know how long improvements associated with acupuncture will
last and whether better trained acupuncturists really achieve better results
than those with basic training only," Dr. Linde said.
SOURCE: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, published online January 21,
2009
