Acupuncture and back pain
While there is no definitive way to resolve lower back pain, the use of acupuncture to treat this condition has increased dramatically over the past few years, based mainly on placebo-controlled trials that have validated it as a reliable method of pain relief.
The largest experiment on acupuncture for back pain to date has shown that acupuncture is effective in the treatment of back pain. Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, found that both real and fake acupuncture perform much better than conventional care for low back pain relief. Over 1,100 patients were randomly assigned to receive traditional acupuncture, sham acupuncture or conventional therapy.
After six months, patients rated their pain levels and functional ability their scores then determined how well each of the therapies worked. In the traditional acupuncture group, 47 percent of patients reported significant improvement.
In the sham acupuncture group, 44 percent improved. While in the conventional therapy group, 27 percent reported improvement.
More research on acupuncture for back pain
For back pain a number of treatment approaches may be incorporated to your treatment plan such as massage, fascia release, acupuncture and heat treatment.
