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Back pain is one of the most common reasons people see a health care provider. It has been
estimated that up to 80% of the world's population will suffer from back pain at some point
in their lives, with the lower back as the most common location of pain. Although most
episodes of low back pain last less than two weeks, research has shown that recurrence rates
for low back pain can reach as high as 50% in the first few months following an initial
episode.1,2
While there is no definitive way to resolve lower back pain, the use of acupuncture to treat this condition has increased dramatically in the past few decades, based in a large extent to placebo-controlled studies that have validated it as a reliable method of pain relief. The results of a recent study published in the
Clinical Journal of Pain3 provide further proof that acupuncture
is a safe and effective procedure for low-back pain, and that it can maintain positive outcomes for periods of six months or longer without producing the negative side-effects that often accompany more traditional pain remedies.
Drs. Christer Carlsson and Bengt Sj˜lund of the Lund University Hospital in Sweden recruited
50 patients (33 women, 17 men) from a tertiary level pain clinic for their study. The median
age of the participants was 49.8; each patient had been suffering chronic low back pain for a
minimum of six months and had tried a variety of other therapies (such as corsets, nerve
blocks, drugs and physiotherapy) to treat their condition, but to no avail.
Subjects were randomly assigned to a manual acupuncture group, an electroacupuncture group or
a placebo group. Treatment sessions lasted a total of 20 minutes each and were delivered
once per week for eight weeks, with the same amount of time and care given to all patients
in each group. A follow-up treatment was given after two months, and a tenth and final
treatment was given after an additional two months. Analysis of the pain diaries revealed
"significant" differences between acupuncture and placebo patients at the one-, three- and
six-month intervals following treatment, all of which favored acupuncture as a more effective
form of pain relief. For example, in the acupuncture group, both morning and evening pain
scores were lower than baseline measurements and continued to decrease for the duration of
treatment. In the placebo group, however, pain scores were several points higher after one
month than they were at baseline, and continued to remain higher than the baseline scores
throughout the study. For more information contact The Healing Arts Medical center , Inc.
303.623.1140.
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