Before an individual undergoes any form of alternative treatment like acupuncture, they would first opt for more conventional means like exercise. Exercises increase ability to be physically mobile, along with strengthening the muscles, and improving disks’ stability. A day of rest in the early stages may profit by lessening the pain initially by inactivity.
Acupuncture Linwood has a wide variety of medical uses and can be especially helpful in dealing with musculoskeletal problems, such as arthritic symptoms, neck, back and joint pain. The pain relief comes quickly and is often long lasting; acupuncture combines well with osteopathy.
The ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture works better than anything modern medicine has devised for the treatment of back pain, scientists have concluded.
In trials among 1,100 patients with chronic lower back pain which had lasted for an average of eight years, almost half (47 per cent) of those who received acupuncture showed significant improvement – compared with barely a quarter (27 per cent) of those given conventional treatment. The effects lasted for at least six months, long after the treatment was completed.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Regensberg, in the spa town of Bad Abbach in Germany, who randomly allocated patients to receive ten 30-minute sessions of sham acupuncture, real acupuncture or conventional treatment.
Sham acupuncture involved sticking needles in randomly over the lower back, avoiding the meridians and points that dictate where the needles are placed in traditional acupuncture.
The results showed that 44 per cent of volunteers suffering from back pain showed a significant improvement with sham acupuncture.
Michael Haake, who led the study, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, said: “The superiority of both forms of acupuncture suggests a common underlying mechanism that may act on pain generation or transmission of pain signals … and is stronger than the action mechanism of conventional therapy.”
The findings add to evidence accumulated over the past 10 years suggesting that the 4,000-year-old practice of acupuncture is an effective treatment for back pain, which affects up to 70-85 per cent of the population at some point.