If you suffer with chronic pain it’s likely you are taking strong painkillers.
Unfortunately these medications carry side effects and long term implications. There is an effective alternative to treat pain and it has no side effects with positive long term effects.
The experts from Harvard university Drs Helen Langevin and Carolyn Berstein set the record straight over on the Harvard Health blog on the subject of acupuncture for pain. "Thanks to the development of valid placebo controls (for example, a retractable “sham” device that looks like an acupuncture needle but does not penetrate the skin), and the publication of several large and well-designed clinical trials in the last decade, we have the start of a solid foundation for truly understanding the effectiveness of acupuncture.
How do we know if acupuncture really works for pain?
Individual large-scale clinical studies have consistently demonstrated that acupuncture provided better pain relief compared with usual care. However, most studies also showed little difference between real and sham (fake) acupuncture. In order to address this concern, a 2012 meta-analysis combined data from roughly 18,000 individual patients in 23 high-quality randomised controlled trials of acupuncture for common pain conditions. This analysis conclusively demonstrated that acupuncture is superior to sham for low back pain, headache, and osteoarthritis, and improvements seen were similar to that of other widely used non-opiate pain relievers.
And the safety profile of acupuncture is excellent, with very few adverse events when performed by a trained practitioner. Meanwhile, basic science studies of acupuncture involving animals and humans have shown other potential benefits, from lowering blood pressure to long-lasting improvements in brain function. More broadly, acupuncture research has resulted in a number of insights and advances in biomedicine, with applications beyond the field of acupuncture itself."
Get in touch if you have any questions or concerns about how acupuncture could help you.
Conveniently located 3 mins from Leicester Square and Covent Garden in Central London and Shoreditch station in east London.