Acupuncture as Treatment for Headaches

Have you ever considered an alternative therapy, such as acupuncture, to treat your headaches? Although most people still prefer taking prescription headache medications as ordered by their doctor, these traditional treatments are being blamed for an ever growing problem. The problem is that some medicines that are supposed to treat headaches will actually cause a different and worse type of head pain. The size of this problem is evidenced by the increasing number of people looking for less conventional therapies for their headaches. Based on results from a variety of clinical studies, one of these alternative treatments, acupuncture, has been found to be very satisfactory in relieving headache pain.

Some Problems with Traditional Headache Medicines

While prescription or over the counter medications are still the most popular choices for treating headaches, there are some serious problems associated with these treatments. One of these problems is that one pain medicine doesn’t work for a variety of pains. For instance, while some of these conventional medications work great for the treatment of migraine headaches and others are great for relieving tension headaches, it has been shown that overall these medicines do not work well when trying to treat a variety of headaches.

Worse yet, these conventional medicines can sometimes cause an ordinary migraine to evolve into something called Chronic Daily Headache (CDH). This disorder is an even larger problem that the original migraine because it is much more difficult for doctors to treat patients who suffer from the CDH type of headache. For instance, CDH can occur 15 times or more in a single month. Further increasing this dilemma is the fact that CDH is shown to be on the rise, prompting both patients and doctors alike to seek alternative headache remedies.

Another conventional way to treat a headache is to avoid it all together. It has been discovered through research that most headaches are triggered by factors like certain types of food or too little sleep. However, it is not always realistic to think a headache sufferer can always avoid all of their triggers. So, if these triggers can't be avoided and headache medicines could possibly cause even more painful and more frequent headaches, what other options are there?

Acupuncture Therapy - A Viable Option

For more than 5,000 years, acupuncture has been used by doctors in Eastern countries as an alternative therapy for all sorts sicknesses as well as aches and pain.

The procedure of acupuncture involves inserting extremely thin needles at specific places in the body. The needles are then left in place for a period of time ranging from a few minutes to several hours.

Acupuncture originated in Oriental medicine. Those who practice acupuncture believe that the body has an energy force, called Qi (chee), which can at times, become unbalanced. It is this lack of balance that causes illness. They believe that by placing needles in precise locations on the body where these energy lines are near the skin's surface they can bring the Qi back into balance, thus providing healing and relieving pain for the patient.

While acupuncture has been used as a medical practice for hundreds of years, its effectiveness in the treatment of headaches has only recently been studied with any great depth.

Recent Studies Prove Acupuncture Works

Many different groups have recently studied the effect of acupuncture on headaches. They have come to the conclusion the practice does help relieve headache pain. For instance, a study from the United Kingdom which was even published by the prestigious British Medical Journal, shows patients who were often absent from work because of headache pain took fewer sick days after they received acupuncture treatments for a time period of three months. Another study conducted in the United States by researchers from the University of North Carolina provided results which showed undeniable improvements in CDH patients after they received acupuncture treatments.

Some Acupuncture Studies Gave Interesting Results

A couple of other acupuncture studies, however, gave an unusual mix of results. In Germany, a pair of studies showed that acupuncture did indeed help those who suffered with migraine and tension headaches. This was determined by comparing the results with patients who did not receive any acupuncture treatments whatsoever. Researchers were surprised, however, to find no real difference in test results from those who received real acupuncture and those who received so-called placebo acupuncture. In placebo acupuncture the needles are inserted into areas that are not supposed to give any known benefits. These findings lead one to think that either the desired positive results of acupuncture could be simply a result of the power of suggestion. Or, and even more interesting, one might speculate the "phony" acupuncture could actually be tapping into some kind of hidden and not yet fully understood or researched benefit.

Regardless of the results, these tests gave enough evidence to convince the British National Heath Service that acupuncture really was beneficial to those suffering with headaches. As a result of these studies, many General Practitioners within the United Kingdom have begun to offer acupuncture to their patients as an alternative headache treatment, one without any dangerous or painful side effects.

 Acupuncture as Treatment for Headaches