Headaches & Migraines
Headaches and migraines can be debilitating and interfere with your ability to function in everyday life. Traditional treatment is typically from a pharmaceutical approach, but unfortunately, there is the risk of side effects or no results at all. Because of this, many studies have been done on safer modalities of treatment and acupuncture has been at the top of the list. Below are three exerts from the scholarly article:
“As a consequence of these and 20 other high-quality trials involving 4419 participants, the 2009 Cochrane review by Linde and colleagues found that there is consistent evidence that acupuncture is beneficial in the treatment of acute migraine attacks and that the available studies suggest that acupuncture is at least as effective as prophylactic drug treatment and has fewer adverse effects.”
“Additional randomized control studies published since the 2009 review are in keeping with this conclusion. Yang and colleagues found that 24 acupuncture treatments, compared with topirmarate, were more effective and safe (11 times more patients experienced adverse effects in the topirmarate group than in the acupuncture group). Wang and coauthors reported that acupuncture was more effective than flunarizine in decreasing the duration of migraine attacks. Acupuncture has also been shown to be more effective than standard therapy for the treatment of tension headache, osteoarthritis, shoulder pain, and lower back pain, with fewer unwanted adverse effects.”
“On the basis of the existing evidence, acupuncture should be an option for the first-line treatment of migraine to supplement other non-pharmacologic treatment options. It is at least as effective as prophylactic drug therapy, has longer lasting effects, is safe, seems to be cost-effective and reduces drug intake with possibly severe unwanted effects.”