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September 26, 2007

Acupuncture Helps Back Pain

According to a German study, acupuncture can help relieve back pain in almost half of the recipients. The experiment used tradition treatments such a pain killers, physical therapy, massage and exercise, against real and sham acupuncture. Interestingly, even sham acupuncture resulted in lower perception of back pain similar to that of real acupuncture.

Although the study was not designed to determine how acupuncture works, Endres said, its findings are in line with a theory that pain messages to the brain can be blocked by competing stimuli. Dr. Brian Berman, the University of Maryland's director of complementary medicine, said the real and the sham acupuncture may have worked for reasons that can be explained in Western terms: by changing the way the brain processes pain signals or by releasing natural painkillers in the body.

Chinese medicine holds that there are hundreds of points on the body that link to invisible pathways for the body's vital energy, or qi. The theory goes that stimulating the correct points with acupuncture needles can release blocked qi.

tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health acupuncture

Posted by linda at September 26, 2007 8:26 AM