We have talked about a lot of home remedies and alternative therapies that just don’t seem to work when they are tested scientifically. But this is not to say that traditional herbal or complementary therapies never work. On the contrary, we are happy to recommend them if the science shows that they are effective. We have the same requirement for the usual therapies of ‘Western’ medicine. If the science says that something works and that it is safe, we recommend it, no matter where it comes from.
Acupuncture is an example where the sceptics from the world of doctors and Western medicine may be wrong, and the proponents of traditional or complementary therapies may be right – at least for some problems. Evidence suggests that acupuncture can be an effective therapy for treating nausea and treating pain in some patients. Researchers have subjected acupuncture to careful (and some not so careful) studies to see whether or not it works for a variety of medical problems. When researchers put all of the studies together and analyse them carefully, the science tells us that acupuncture works for some things and seems not to work for others.
If you are feeling really nauseous because of something like having anaesthesia or chemotherapy, acupuncture may be able to help you. Compiled studies looking at a particular pressure point in the wrist showed that acupuncture reduced nausea after surgery and anaesthesia even more than anti-emetics, the drugs intended to help you feel less nauseous. Acupuncture can also decrease the immediate vomiting some people experience after chemotherapy.
There is some evidence to suggest that acupuncture also helps with particular types of pain. Three trials of the use of acupuncture during labour suggest that it may decrease a woman’s need for chemical pain relief when delivering a baby, although the results were only marginally significant. Randomized controlled trials showed that there may be some short-term benefits from acupuncture in relieving shoulder pain, and acupuncture worked better to relieve immediate neck pain than sham or fake treatments. The subjects who got acupuncture also reported less neck pain when they returned for follow-up a week later. Acupuncture seems to have some benefit for chronic back pain (but not for acute back pain), but most people agree that more and better studies are really needed. A number of these studies are now underway. Some studies also suggest that acupuncture works for headaches, but again, more studies need to be done before we can make a clear call on acupuncture for this problem as well.
Acupuncture is not a cure-all though. For some problems, equally careful studies and compilations of the literature tell us that it doesn’t work or probably doesn’t work. Acupuncture does not seem to work to treat cocaine addiction, depression, insomnia or irritable bowel syndrome. It may or may not help for tennis elbow; you may have some short-term pain relief if you get needle acupuncture for tennis elbow, but it doesn’t seem to last long and the limited benefit is based on only two small studies.