Acupuncture (who knows why?) Eases Back Pain

This really makes no sense. Sticking needles into your skin along the “meridians” that allegedly course through your body.

But here’s the issue:
knowing WHY something works is not a prerequisite to it working. And, if we don’t understand it yet, if it does not fit with any of our ways of thinking, if it makes no sense based on our theories of physiology … maybe we should reconsider what we think we think we know.

Because, for back pain, any kind of acupuncture, whether it pierced the skin or not, eased chronic lower back pain in a group of adult patients. Click here for the article.

“All were superior to usual care,” said Daniel Cherkin, lead author of a report published in the May 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. “Acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic back pain. People receiving acupuncture are more likely to get better.”

Boom.

This trial, the largest randomized one of its kind, was funded by the National Center for complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Medication use in all the acupuncture groups decreased immediately and over the next year. About two-thirds of patients were taking medication, mostly painkillers such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). By eight weeks, that had declined to 47 percent in the acupuncture groups and 59 percent in the usual-care group.

We just don’t know why acupuncture is so effective, although some theories persist. According to this article, “it’s possible that the “superficial” acupuncture still kicks off a cascade of physiological processes that result in relief.”

That is science lingo for, “um, it looks like it works.”

Janet Konefal, a licensed acupuncturist and assistant dean for complementary and integrative medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said she was not surprised that non-puncture stimulation had equal effects.

“You can stimulate a point with pressure, needle, electricity, even now with laser light and different frequencies of laser light,” she said. “‘Pecking’ on a point is a Japanese technique for stimulation. You might use that with someone who is older or weak in their constitution. That could explain why two different methods of stimulation work equally well.”

More information
The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has more on acupuncture.