The American Academy of Neurology has completed trials published on June 22nd of this year to show that Acupuncture can reduce chronic tension type headaches.
This was published in the online issue of “Neurology”, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Tension headaches typically are those that involve the Tai-Yang area of the head (the temples). When they occur for at least 50% of the month then they are considered Chronic, and they can be due to an overload of stress at work, at home, or in other situations.
As the headaches last for around half of the sufferers time, pain medications are often less effective than they would like, and not really an option for some, especially as opioids are not good for your health and other painkillers often have unwanted side effects.
Tension headaches are extremely common in the modern day, and with increased pressures to get more and more done to compete in business, we can only see this getting worse.
The study published by the Academy of Neurology, involved 218 people who were diagnosed with chronic tension headaches, and had them for an average of 11 years. They were suffering for 22 days per month on average. The participants were randomly assigned to receive either “true acupuncture” or “superficial acupuncture”. The “True acupuncture” treatments involved achieving De-Qi and the superficial treatments just pierced the surface of the skin and achieved no De-Qi. Everyone had two or three sessions per week, for a total of 20 sessions, this lasted two months and the subjects were followed up on once every 4 weeks for an additional six months and were required to fill in pain and medication diaries to measure the results.
In the results, 68% of people receiving the De-Qi acupuncture reported at least a 50% reduction in monthly headache days compared to 50% of people who received the no De-Qi version of acupuncture.
Researchers found the number of monthly headache days gradually decreased after treatment in both groups. For those who received De-Qi acupuncture, the headache days decreased from 20 days per month at the beginning of the study to 7 days per month by the end. For those who had non De-Qi acupuncture, the headache days decreased from 23 days per month at the beginning of the study to 12 days per month at the end of the study. There were no side effects in any participant other than very mild.
Ying Li, MD, PhD, Study Author, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chengdu, China said “While this study showed that acupuncture can reduce headaches, more research is needed to determine the longer-term effectiveness of acupuncture and how it compares to other treatment options. In comparing treatment options, cost-effectiveness is another important factor to evaluate.”
The study was supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Source:
American Academy of Neurology
Journal reference:
Acupuncture for Patients With Chronic Tension-Type Headache: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Neurology. doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000200670. Zheng, H., et al. (2022)
Author:
Michelle Bebbington. Lic.Ac.TCM, MAA, RBAF.
Acupuncture Association Board / British Acupuncture Federation Board