While most people still prefer taking pills for their headaches as ordered per their doctor, an ever growing problem is being blamed on conventional treatments for headaches. This problem is evidenced by the increasing number of people seeking alternative therapies. One of these alternative treatments, acupuncture, has shown to be excellent in combating headaches, based from the results of clinical trials.
Problems with conventional medicines
Some conventional medications work great for treatment of migraine headaches, with others effective in helping tension headaches. However, it has been shown, overall, they are not effective in treating a wide range ofheadaches. Worse, they can cause an ordinary migraine (if there is such a thing) to change into something named Chronic Daily Headache (CDH), which presents an even bigger problem because it's much more difficult to treat patients who suffer form this type of headache..
CDH can occur 15 times or more in a single month. The fact a headache being treated by a medication can change into another type of headache can only be deemed ironic. Further increasing this dilemma is that CDH is shown to be on the rise, prompting both patients and doctors alike to seek alternative remedies.
Most headaches are triggered by factors like certain types of food or too little sleep, and while precautions can be taken by a headache sufferer, it's not always feasible to do so. If these triggers can't be avoided and medicines aren't that reliable, what other method is there?
Acupuncture Therapy
Acupuncture, for more than 5,000 years, has been used as an alternative therapy for all sorts of ills, in Eastern cultures.
Acupuncture involves the practice of inserting extremely fine needles at certain points in the body. The needles are left in place for a period ranging from just moments to several hours.
Practicioners of Oriental medicine believe that the body has an energy force, called Qi (chee), which can at times, become unbalanced. Placing needles in precise locations on the body where they believe energy lines are near the skin's surface can balance the Qi, thus providing healing to the patient.
While acupuncture has seen use in healing for a very long time, its effectiveness in the treating of headaches has only recently, been studied with any great depth.
Studies Prove Acupuncture Works
In a study from the UK, which was published by the prestigious British Medical Journal it was shown sufferers who were often absent from work because of headache pain took fewer sick days after they underwent acupuncture treatments for a period of three months. In the United States, a study conducted by the University of North Carolina provided results which showed definite improvements for CDH sufferers after acupuncture treatment.
Some Interesting Results
In Germany, two studies revealed that acupuncture helped those with migraine and tension headaches as compared to sufferers who did not receive any acupuncture at all. However, no real difference could be determined between real acupuncture or so-called placebo acupuncture. Placebo acupuncture inserts the needles into areas without any known benefits. This leads one to think that the desired good results could be due to simply suggestion, and even more interesting, the "phony" acupuncture could be tapping into a kind of hidden and not yet fully understood benefit.
No matter what the results of the study show, they were sufficent to persuade the British National Heath Service. Many General Practicioners within the UK, as the results of the study became known, have now begun to offer acupuncture as an alternative, headache treatment, without any harmful side effects.
For more help on the prevention, treatment and remedies for migraines please see the Complete Guide To Migraine Headaches.
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