by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) once thought by numerous to be of questionable value, the most complete, comprehensive and rigorous study of acupuncture to date has found that the procedure can ease chronic pain, as well as the pain of migraines and arthritis, according to a report by The new York Times. the most recent findings underscore previous scientific data that the timeless therapy used by an estimated three million Americans yearly is of immense value to pain sufferers.
The value of acupuncture has been analyzed for numerous years, but some of the results of those studies have offered researchers and scientists a mixed and mired picture concerning its benefits. That is due in large part to the fact that many of those studies were either small or of poor quality.
But the new research, financed by the national Institutes of health and conducted over a period of years, “was a comprehensive analysis of earlier research that involved data on nearly 18,000 patients,” the paper reported.
‘Acupuncture is an effective treatment for pain’
Researchers, who published their results in the journal Archives of internal Medicine, found that acupuncture carried out better than sham treatments and conventional automobile when utilized by clients suffering from migraines, chronic back, neck and take on pain, and osteoarthritis.
“In the primary analysis, including all eligible RCTs (randomized controlled trials), acupuncture was exceptional to both sham and no-acupuncture control for each pain condition,” said a summary of the study’s results. “After exclusion of Camiseta Crystal Palace FC an outlying set of RCTs that strongly favored acupuncture, the effect sizes were similar across pain conditions.”
“Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is for that reason a sensible referral option. significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is much more than a placebo,” the researchers concluded.
“This has been a controversial subject for a long time,” Dr. Andrew J. Vickers, attending research methodologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer Camiseta Arsenal FC center in new York and the lead author of the study, told the paper. “But when you try to answer the question the best way, as we did, you get very clear answers.
“We think there’s firm evidence supporting acupuncture for the treatment of chronic pain,” he said.
For those who are not familiar with the procedure, acupuncturists use small, sterilized needles, inserted at various places on the body to stimulate acupoints, which in turn produce a variety of results. It’s one of the most widely practiced forms of alternative medicine in the U.S. and it is increasingly provided by numerous hospitals.
Most often, adults seek out acupuncture in search of relief from chronic pain, though the procedure is being increasingly applied to children, according to statistics. government estimates put the number of children undergoing acupuncture treatments at about 150,000 in 2007, the Times reported.
Despite its growing popularity; however, there are still questions about its effectiveness – questions that have surrounded acupuncture for years. Specifically, those who question its efficacy wonder if the procedure really relieves pain or if clients are experiencing a psychological effect.
Extensive research looked at many available data
Vickers, along with a team of scientists from around the world, including England, Sweden, and Germany, wanted to know the answers to those questions, so they sought out years of data and pooled the results. According to the Times:
Rather than averaging the results or conclusions from years of previous studies, a common but less rigorous form of meta-analysis, Dr. Vickers and his colleagues first selected 29 randomized studies of acupuncture that they identified to be of high quality. then they contacted the authors to obtain their raw data, which they scrutinized and pooled for even more analysis. This helped them appropriate for statistical and methodological problems with the previous studies, allowing them to reach much more accurate and reputable conclusions about whether acupuncture actually works.
That process took nearly six years. “Replicating pretty much every single number reported in dozens of papers is no quick or easy task,” said Vickers.
In the end, though, Vickers and his colleagues found that at the completion of their treatment, about half of clients who underwent true acupuncture said their conditions improved, compared to about 30 percent of clients who did not undergo it.
“There were 30 or 40 people from all over the world involved in this research, and as a whole the sense was that this was a clinically essential effect size,” Vickers said, adding that acupuncture “is relatively noninvasive Camiseta Aston Villa FC and relatively safe.”
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