Acupuncture Can Reduce Arthritis Pain
I think positive results in trials of acupuncture are probably the hardest for mainstream medicine to follow. There is very little correlation between our Western beliefs and Eastern medicine. It requires an entirely different view. Just because we do not understand something, however, does not mean it is ineffective. Acupuncture has literally thousands of years of anecdotal evidence relating to its effectiveness and safety. Mainstream medicine barely has decades.
(article) Acupuncture offers a significant adjunct to conventional therapy in the management of osteoarthritis, according to the results of an NIH-supported study of complementary medicine in osteoarthritis pain management presented here at the 17th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. Although more patients are turning to complementary medicine and more physicians want to integrate complementary medicine into their practices, evidence for the efficacy of these methods is lacking, according to Dr. Brian M. Berman, professor of family medicine and director of the complementary medicine program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Berman and colleagues at the University of Maryland conducted a study to investigate the impact of acupuncture on pain levels in osteoarthritis of the knees in the elderly. In the first phase, the researchers evaluated 73 patients, all with moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the knees, who were not relieved by anti-inflammatory medications. The subjects were randomized to continue on anti-inflammatory drugs alone or anti-inflammatory drugs plus 8 weeks of acupuncture treatment. “We found on the 3-month follow-up that there were significant changes,” Dr. Berman told Reuters Health. “Acupuncture did reduce their pain, they had less stiffness and they were able to function better.”