 |
NY HOLISTIC CARE NETWORK
holisticnyonline.com
|
 |
|
|||
Acupuncture
Scientific Evidence In Support Of Using Acupuncture For Certain Conditions While some are still skeptical of the benefits of acupuncture for health benefits, there are actually many studies that show that it is indeed an effective means for treating a number of health conditions.The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends acupuncture only for: tension related headaches, migraine, and severe lower back pains. The World Health Organization United Nations Deems These Conditions Appropriate For Acupuncture: Digestive
• Abdominal pain Emotional
• Anxiety
• Cataracts Gynecological
• Infertility Miscellaneous
• Addiction control
• Arthritis
• Headaches Respiratory
• Asthma Systematic Reviews Professionals often carry out research into acupuncture evidence and its effectiveness by completing a systematic review. This is a study of studies, which takes into account the findings from other similar studies to reach an overall conclusion. These systematic reviews have great importance in the health industry because they can gather and check all findings in individual studies rather than relying on one single study. Although a systematic review will not give conclusive evidence every time about the chances of at treatments being successful, they are often used to predict how acupuncture, or any other treatment, compares to another method. So What Evidence Is There For Acupuncture? The Cochrane Collaboration is one of the most respected organizations that carry out systematic reviews for medical treatments including acupuncture. The organization has published several systematic reviews about the technique. According to The Cochrane Collaboration, it has been found that there is a lot of evidence to support acupuncture for the following conditions:
• Chronic lower back pain One thing to remember with systematic reviews of acupuncture Studies however it is that’s there are no rules or guidelines about how acupuncture trials should be conducted. Because acupuncture is not governed in the same way as other medical procedures, it can be problematic to clearly assess results. Just because there is some positive evidence from the study, does not mean that this is proof that acupuncture works. There are plenty of contradictory pieces of evidence so it is important to keep an open mind when conducting research.In the year 2000, one survey carried out by the British Medical Association showed that around half of the doctors who work for the British NHS had prescribed acupuncture for their patients.In the year 2009, the British medical journal published an analysis that came from 13 trials that were carried out at the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. These trials compared genuine acupuncture to a placebo style of acupuncture and there were 3025 patients involved. It was noted that there was at significant difference between acupuncture and no acupuncture and again, a significant difference between acupuncture and placebo acupuncture. The study concluded that the acupuncture brought about an analgesic effect although the research is believed that there was not enough evidence to say whether acupuncture could help reduce pain or alter the psychological condition of the patient. Andrew Vickers who works at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York led a meta-analysis in 2012 that took 29 controlled trials of patients who were being treated for chronic pain. These trials used 17,922 subjects and found again that genuine acupuncture was better than using placebo or no acupuncture. Further Studies There are other numerous studies showing acupuncture to be effective for certain conditions and thousands of people use this form of alternative medicine every day. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine supports acupuncture as a viable alternative treatment for numerous conditions and is actively supporting further studies. The Need For More Studies Experts say that more studies are needed, but while there is a large budget for pharmaceutical companies to carry out research into drugs, the same sort of budgets do not exist for acupuncture. Bottom Line While many western doctors have come to respect and recommend acupuncture to patients, overall western medicine institutions are still not focusing on acupuncture as seriously as they should do. It would seem that even with a seeming lack of supporting evidence; there is still enough faith in acupuncture from medically trained doctors for them to be confident enough to prescribe the treatment.
|
||||