Does Acupuncture For Lower Back Pain Really Work?

The National Institutes of Health reports that up to 80 percent of all people in the U.S will suffer from some type of back pain. That means four out of five adults are likely to have low back pain at some point in their life, making it one of the most common ailments, second only to headache.

Wow! That's a lot of people with back pain!

There are many treatments available to help relieve this pain. Unfortunately, there is no one single definitive treatment. So the use of acupuncture for lower back pain has become more popular over the past few years.

A number of studies have shown acupuncture as a reliable method for pain relief. In fact, the Annals of Internal Medicine has published an analysis on acupuncture for lower back pain showing that among the two dozen previously published studies on back pain treatments, acupuncture was
"significantly more effective" than no treatment.

Yet, there are still those who don't believe in the benefits of acupuncture.

So How Does Acupuncture Work?

Acupuncture has been used to treat a number of illnesses for hundreds of years in China and many other Asian nations.

The treatment is based on the theory that the human body is made up of channels or meridians where the "life force" or qi flows through. If these meridians are blocked off because of stress or other causes of illness, it compromises the health of the individual. The goal of acupuncture, therefore, is to unblock these clogged meridians and allow the qi to once more flow freely throughout the body. This is done by sticking needles unto the affected meridians to release the qi.

Is There Science Behind Acupuncture?

In a study published in the Clinical Journal of Pain, Dr. Christer Carlsson and his colleague Dr. Bengt Sjlund of the Lund University Hospital in Sweden were able to prove the safety of using acupuncture for lower back pain.

Studying 50 patients who were suffering chronic low back pain for a minimum of six months, the scientists randomly assigned one group out of three to undergo sessions of acupuncture. The other two groups underwent electroacupuncture and placebo, respectively.

After four sessions plus a follow up treatment two months later, "significant" changes were observed in the group that underwent acupuncture for lower back pain. Based on these results, the scientists concluded that "there is now reasonable evidence that acupuncture has a clinically relevant pain-relieving effect on certain forms of chronic pain."

So if you're dealing with back pain, it may be worth considering acupuncture to get the pain relief you need.