Pain Relief

Pain is the most common reason for seeking medical attention. For some people pain may be temporary and easy to tolerate, but for many others it can be severe or unrelenting or both. If you have a body, then you will be familiar with the experience of pain.

The good news is that, although pain is inevitable, suffering is optional! Acupuncture has been used for centuries to relieve pain and rigorous studies all over the world are continuing to confirm its efficacy.

 

What Causes Pain?

Pain is a signal from your nervous system that something is wrong. It most commonly results from an underlying disease or health condition or from an injury to the tissues or joints, including surgical trauma. It can also arise from inflammation or from a nervous system problem (neuropathic pain) or from an unknown cause.

 

The Problem with Pain Relief Medication

Pharmaceutical drugs can provide effective relief of pain in 20% to 70% of cases. Unfortunately, this often comes at a cost with many of the standard medications associated with serious side effect.

 

Chinese Medicine’s View of Pain

Whenever there is tissue injury, the local blood circulation is disrupted. Blood is essential to supply local tissues with anti-inflammatory factors, proteins for rebuilding damaged tissues, oxygen to cleanse and a wide variety of immune cells to fight against invasion of bacteria and other pathogenic factors. In the language of Chinese Medicine, pain is a stagnation of Blood. Pain is a signal sent to the central nervous system that communicates the information about damage to local tissues.

 

How Acupuncture Helps with Pain Relief

Whenever an acupuncture needle is inserted, a number of different things start to happen. The body interprets the presence of an acupuncture needle as a potential threat to its integrity and an immune response is initiated. The primary function of this immune response is to protect the body from pathogenic invasion. This is achieved by

  • enhancing the local circulation of blood
  • producing endorphins, the body’s own pain relieving factors
  • stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system to promote relaxation
  • softening tension in the muscle structure

 

Common Pain Conditions Seen in Chinese Medicine Practice

  • Neck, shoulder, elbow and knee pain
  • Low back pain and sciatica
  • Joint and arthritic pain
  • Headaches & migraine
  • Menstrual pain
  • Digestive pain
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Plantar fasciitis
  • Carpal tunnel and RSI

 

The Research on Acupuncture and Pain Relief

Many high-level studies have demonstrated that acupuncture is an effective method for relief of pain associated with various disorders.

  • Migraine 
    A narrative review of high quality randomised controlled trials and two systematic reviews including a Cochrane systematic review update, have confirmed that acupuncture is superior to sham acupuncture and seems to be at least as effective as conventional preventative medication in reducing migraine frequency (1-3).
  • Headache 
    The most recent Cochrane systematic review update confirmed that acupuncture is effective for frequent episodic and chronic tension-type headaches with moderate to low quality evidence (4). A brief review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses described acupuncture as having a ‘potentially important role as part of a treatment plan for migraine, tension-type headache, and several different types of chronic headache disorders’ (5).
  • Low back pain
    A review of 32 randomised control trials (7) has shown acupuncture has a positive effect in the treatment of chronic non-specific low back pain in comparison to placebo and improved function. Another review (8) showed acupuncture was found to be superior to NSAIDS in effect when treating acute low back pain.
  • Sciatica 
    A review (9) found acupuncture to be 2nd in effectiveness out of 21 interventions for pain intensity related to sciatica. The review showed acupuncture may be superior in effect to drugs and may also increase the effectiveness of drugs when used in conjunction (10, 11).
  • Knee osteoarthritis
    A systematic review relating to osteoarthritis of the knee showed acupuncture to provide significant pain relief, improved mobility and quality of life (12). Acupuncture was also shown to have a stronger effect than standard care suggesting an effective alternative to pain relief medication for people with knee osteoarthritis. The reviewers concluded that ‘current evidence supports the use of acupuncture as an alternative for traditional analgesics in patients with osteoarthritis’.
  • Post-operative pain
    A systematic review and meta-analysis of 13 RCTs in 2016, found that acupuncture, electroacupuncture (EA) and transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) improved pain on day one after surgery and reduced opioid use (13)
  • Neck pain
    Acupuncture was found to be superior to controlled intervention or inactive treatment neck pain relief (14).
  • Frozen Shoulder
    At early stage of Shoulder Impingement Syndrome (SIS), exercise combined with therapies such as kinesio taping, specific exercises, and acupuncture can be considered a first choice of intervention (15)

 

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References

1. Da Silva AN. Acupuncture for migraine prevention. Headache. 2015 Mar;55(3):470-3.

2. Linde K, Allais G, Brinkhaus B, Fei Y, Mehring M, Vertosick EA, et al. Acupuncture for the prevention of episodic migraine. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews. 2016(6):Cd001218.

3. Yang Y, Que Q, Ye X, Zheng G. Verum versus sham manual acupuncture for migraine: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Acupuncture in Medicine: Journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society. 2016 Apr;34(2):76-83.

4. Linde K, Allais G, Brinkhaus B, Fei Y, Mehring M, Shin BC, et al. Acupuncture for the prevention of tension type headache. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2016;4:Cd007587.

5. Coeytaux RR, Befus D. Role of Acupuncture in the Treatment or Prevention of Migraine, Tension-Type Headache, or Chronic Headache Disorders. Headache. 2016 Jul;56(7):1238-40.

6. Lam M, Galvin R, Curry P. Effectiveness of acupuncture for nonspecific chronic low back pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Spine. 2013 Nov 15;38(24):2124-38.

7. Lee JH, Choi TY, Lee MS, Lee H, Shin BC, Lee H. Acupuncture for acute low back pain: a systematic review. The Clinical Journal of Pain. 2013 Feb;29(2):172-85.

8. Lewis RA, Williams NH, Sutton AJ, Burton K, Din NU, Matar HE, et al. Comparative clinical effectiveness of management strategies for sciatica: systematic review and network meta-analyses. The Spine Journal: Official Journal of the North American Spine Society. 2015 Jun 1;15(6):1461-77.

9. Qin Z, Liu X, Wu J, Zhai Y, Liu Z. Effectiveness of Acupuncture for Treating Sciatica: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine: eCAM. 2015;2015:425108.

10. Ji M, Wang X, Chen M, Shen Y, Zhang X, Yang J. The Efficacy of Acupuncture for the Treatment of Sciatica: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine: eCAM. 2015;2015:192808.

11. Manyanga T, Froese M, Zarychanski R, Abou-Setta A, Friesen C, Tennenhouse M, et al. Pain management with acupuncture in osteoarthritis: a systematic review and metaanalysis. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2014;14:312.

12. Wu MS, Chen KH, Chen IF, Huang SK, Tzeng PC, Yeh ML, et al. The Efficacy of Acupuncture in Post-Operative Pain Management: A Systematic Review and MetaAnalysis. PloS One. 2016;11(3):e0150367.

13. Trinh K, Graham N, Irnich D, Cameron ID, Forget M. Acupuncture for neck disorders. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2016(5):Cd004870.

14. Dong W, Goost H, Lin XB, Burger C, Paul C, Wang ZL, et al. Treatments for shoulder impingement syndrome: a PRISMA systematic review and network meta-analysis. Medicine. 2015 Mar;94(10):e510.

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