Dealing With Headaches

Although sticking needles in your body doesn’t seem like the best remedy for chronic headache, it’s better for you than aspirin. That’s the findings of a new study done by Duke University. Comparing accupuncture to regular aspirin, acupuncture gave the most releif to those suffering from chronic headaches.

Study Details

About 4,000 human guinea pigs volunteered for this one, and God/dess bless you all. You’ve probably saved the lives of 4,000 real guinea pigs. Anyway, the study was blind in that paitents were wither given aspirin, acupuncture or “sham acupuncture”, where acupuncture needles were insterted in other areas of the body not used to help treat chronic headaches. In the study, chronic headaches also included migraineurs and chronic tension-type headaches.

Acupuncture’ s benefits to your body are not apparent on the first visit. According to the study, you need five or six visits to get long-term relief. Many acupuncturists or Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners also prescribe Chinese herbs along with acupunture treatments, but I could not find if any herbs were added in the study.

65% of the acupuncture group found releif in the severity and duration of their attacks while only 45% of the aspirin group did. Comparing sham acupuncture to real acupunture, sham acupuncture didn’t do too shabby at 45% while real acupuncture gave 53% relief. (That’s due to the placebo affect.)

Doesn’t It Hurt?

Acupuncture needles are incredibly thin — even thinner than innoculation needles. Usually, you don’t feel anything, but sometimes you do. Then, the needles feel like a mosquito bite or, at the worst, a bee sting. However, dogs, cats and horses tend to fall asleep during their acupuncture sessions and you will probably feel sleepy, too. Animals tend to go for acupuncture treatments for back problems, arthritis or chronic allergies that aren’t responding to conventional therapy.

Acupuncture is one of the few alternative therapies that some health insurance companies will cover (all or in part). You have to check with your health insurance to see about payment. You may need a referral from your primary doctor.

Don’t Toss Your Meds

In case you do get acupunture for chronic headaches or migraines, don’t expect to go completely off of the painkillers. It is nice to be able to lower your dose when you can, since long term use of painkillers can bring on health problems like ulcers.

And, as always, please don’t use this blog post in the place of your doctor’s advice.

Hope this helps.