Acupuncture Effective against Headaches

The July 2008 issue of Pain, a prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal published by the International Association for the Check of Pain (IASP), featured a German analyze conducted by eight pediatric doctors and clinicians. The researchers attempted to determine whether or not laser acupuncture would prove operative in relieving the symptoms of chronic headaches in 43 children.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

The cure for each child was individualized and completely based on the traditional Chinese medical theory. The theory competes that bioelectricity, or the electrical current that is produced by living organisms, has a affinity to follow paths of higher conductivity within the human body. These paths, called meridians, contain been shown to be composed of points that own a higher electrical conductivity (lower electrical impedance) than other parts of the body. The ancient Chinese somehow discovered that rousing these points, or "acupoints," produced changes in the body's flow of current, and by doing so, influenced the health of an individual. Stimulation of these points comprise numerous numerous methods, the nearly everyone well-known being acupuncture. Acupuncture is when very thin, electrical-conducting needles are inserted into these "acupoints" with the aim of manipulating the current.

Laser acupuncture, a relatively new mode of stimulation, uses low-energy lasers to influence the flow of current at the acupoints. The German study, which is titled "Laser acupuncture in children with headache: A double-blind, randomized, bicenter, placebo-controlled trial," specifically focuses on the effect of laser stimulation compared to placebo-stimulation.

The German Inspect

The inspect was carried out using the double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled technique so that the accuracy of the results would be once conclusive while the modern scientific means might allow. The German doctors wanted to realize once and for all if active laser treatment is superior to placebo laser treatment; in other words, does it exceptionally work?

The conductors of the inspect took 43 children suffering from either chronic migraine headaches (22 patients) or chronic tension headaches (21 patients) and gave them four randomized treatments over four weeks. Each random treatment was double-blind, which method they were conducted so that both the researcher and the participant were unaware whether the laser had been set at the right strength, or not set at all. Double-blind trials are supposed to produce aim results, since the expectations of the researcher and the participant are assumed to not affect the outcome.

The results of the check were analyzed in three ways. The first technique examined and compared the number of "headache days," or days that the children suffered from headaches. The researchers took the average number of headache days before the treatments and compared them with the average number of headache days once the remedies in both the placebo and the true cure patients.

The second process compared the severity of the pain using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The VAS is a medical tool that helps a person rate the intensity of special sensations and feelings, such when pain. The VAS is obviously highly subjective; however, researchers commonly use this tool in order to analyze changes in individuals over periods of time. In the scientific community, using the VAS to catalogue changes in perception over extended periods of time is seen once more decent than using it at a single point of time.

The final procedure for analyzing the results was to compare the amount of time each child experienced headaches before and as soon as the treatments. The changes in the amount of "headache time" were then examined for the true cure cases and the placebo treatments.

The Results

The results were as follows: the mean number of "headache days" decreased by 1.0 day in the placebo group and 6.4 days in the considered group. The VAS, in contrast to the placebo group, showed a valuable lower in the children's perception of the severity of the headaches. Finally, the children's total amount of time with headaches was found to be much decrease than the placebo group.

In other words, the children who established true laser acupuncture had less days where headaches occurred, felt less pain after headaches did crop up and experienced much less time with headaches than the children who thought they were getting treatment but in truth were not.

The German researchers concluded, "that laser acupuncture can supply a valuable advantage for children with headache, with active laser therapies being clearly more effective than placebo laser treatment."

Acupuncture effective against headaches
Acupuncture