Acupuncture found to help control chronic pain

Posted by ghgeorge
August 28, 2009

A study at the University of Michigan has found that acupuncture can help to reduce pain and can increase the pain potential of opioids. Patients that were diagnosed with fibramyalgia were asked to keep taking their existing pain killers over a two month period of time. Then PET scans were taken at the beginning before any acupuncture was performed and again at the six week mark. The PET scans at the end of the study showed that sites in the brain that deal with pain control were able to bind better to both brain generated and prescription pain killers. This means that acupuncture allows the brain to handle long term pain better by creating more joining points for pain killers. An interesting finding of the study proved that powerful pain killers performed better with acupuncture for all patients. This finding may allow doctors to reduce the level of pain killers prescribed. This is excellent news because all patients become used to levels of opioids in the body and require constant increases of prescriptions to keep the same level of pain supression. (Source: August 9, 2009 – Journal of NeuroImage)

Numerous studies have shown acupuncture to be effective, but this is the first one we have heard of that shows it can reduce pain and increase pain medication effectiveness. It will be interesting if doctors take this research seriously and work with their patients to get them to acupuncture. Acupuncture has traditionally been used by chiropractors or eastern medical doctors. Nether group has held a lot of respect from western medicine doctors who view these people as little more than witch doctors. But this research is hard t ignore and may help patients reduce the medications they are on or keep them from taking opioids completely. Some western doctors have traveled to China to understand how their medical system works compared to ours. The Chinese do not many of the medical conditions that we have so perhaps there is something to learn about a medical system that has been in use for thousands of years.

General, Medical

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