Headaches

Whenever I'm asked to speak about acupuncture I often close the talk with my tag line which goes: "So the next time you have a headache, take 2 safety pins and call me in the morning". While this usually gets a laugh I mean it seriously to let people know that acupuncture works very well for all kinds of headaches. Don't just take my word for it. Now a recently published study found acupuncture to be a useful and cost effective treatment for chronic headaches and migraines.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, compared standard treatment (i.e.: medication) to standard treatment plus acupuncture. The study looked at 401 patients from England and Wales with chronic headaches, primarily migraines. Patients in the acupuncture group received 12 treatments over 3 months. Both groups kept a diary in which they noted the frequency and severity of their symptoms and medication used during the first four weeks, at 3 months and again after 1 year.

At the conclusion the patients who had received acupuncture averaged 22 fewer days of headaches per year, used 15% less medication, made 25% less visits to their doctors and had 15% less sick days that the group using medication alone.

According to one of the authors of the study Dr. Andrew Vickers of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York said, "For severely affected patients, acupuncture reduced the severity and the frequency of their headaches to make a real difference in their lives".

As I tell my patients: "Acupuncture is a jab well done!"

© 2005 Larry Forsberg. All rights reserved.