Treating Chronic Pain With Acupuncture

By Jeanne W. Shiffman, MD, DABFP

Steinmetz Integrative & Functional Medicine Center

More Complementary & Integrative Healthcare Articles

Treating Chronic Pain With Acupuncture

If you have been suffering from pain, whether it be low back pain, knee stiffness, tennis elbow, or plantar fasciitis, you may have already tried pain medicines and are wondering what else you could do to really get rid of it. A treatment that could help you is something that is actually very old, acupuncture.

Acupuncture was developed by the Chinese over 2000 years ago and is one of the oldest medical procedures in the world. It can help with pain anywhere in the body, whether the pain is recent or chronic. The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture for the following orthopedic disorders periarthritis humeroscapularis (shoulder pain), tennis elbow, lower back pain, rheumatoid arthritis and sciatica.

While acupuncture is a traditional healing practice, there have been modern medical studies done to assess its effectiveness. In these studies, needles are sometimes intentionally put in the wrong place and not in designated acupuncture points. This is called sham acupuncture.

Well-designed clinical trials have found that both acupuncture and sham acupuncture are more effective than control interventions (doing nothing) for low back pain. The sham treatments usually worked better than no treatment at all but were not as good as using the true points. In a systematic review of six randomized trials for chronic non-specific low back pain, acupuncture was found to have a small beneficial effect in reducing pain and improving functioning at one month and at three to six month follow ups.

In five other randomized trials, adding acupuncture to a treatment such as medicine, physical therapy or exercise was also found to have a small beneficial effect in reducing pain and improving functional status compared to the treatment on its own.

One study published in the British Medical Journal in 2004, showed that acupuncture helped patients with knee pain already on a prescription anti-inflammatory medication. There was a sham (called placebo acupuncture, since the skin was not pierced) arm of the trial and the true acupuncture was better than the placebo.

Gentle electrical stimulation of the needles may be used to help you improve even faster. Other remedies, medicines and treatments may also be prescribed to complement the acupuncture treatment and get you feeling better sooner.

Acupuncture is a safe, low-risk treatment that has withstood the test of time and will likely help your pain.