Study proves acupuncture can reduce chronic tension headaches
If you suffer with chronic tension headaches and have begun to despair of ever getting the help you need to treat them, the results of a recent medical study should give you hope that acupuncture could be part of the answer.
Tension headaches are said to be chronic when they occur on at least 15 days each month and they affect an estimated 2.25 million people in the UK.
The clinical study was sponsored by the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China and involved 218 people who had been formally diagnosed with chronic tension headaches.
Together the subjects of the study had been living with the condition for an average of 11 years and were experiencing acute headache pain on an average of 22 days each month.
Even those among us who suffer with migraine or even frequent headaches will find it nearly impossible to imagine the misery of spending more than two thirds of the last decade or more trying – and failing – to find effective relief from severe neurological pain.
But this study, published by the Neurology online resource, will give hope to anyone who experiences frequent headaches, chronic tension headaches, or migraine that acupuncture might just be able to deliver a significant pain relief benefit, and in most cases cure the problem entirely.
Those who live with chronic tension headaches typically experience a pressing or tightening feeling on both sides of the head accompanied by various disruptive levels of pain or intensity.
The test groups were split into groups. Some received ‘true’ acupuncture, while the others were subjected to a harmless but ineffective ‘placebo-style’ acupuncture treatment.
Every group received 20 acupuncture treatments spread more or less equally over two months, each test subject had a clinic visit every four weeks, and each group was monitored for six months following their treatment, with participants keeping a record of their headache episodes and any medication they took.
The study found that more than two thirds of those who had received ‘true’ acupuncture reported at least a 50% reduction in the monthly number of headache days compared to 50% of the people who received superficial acupuncture.
Researchers also found that the number of monthly headache days continued to decrease after treatment, for both those who received true acupuncture and those who received superficial acupuncture treatments.
In the case of those who received true acupuncture, headache days decreased from 20 days per month at the beginning of the study to seven days per month by the end of the trial, whilst those who received superficial acupuncture reported a decrease in headache days from 23 days to 12.
This trial is extremely encouraging, since it serves to reinforce the efficacy of acupuncture as an alternative or complementary treatment to conventional clinical care, not only for those who struggle with chronic tension headaches, but also those who are plagued by migraine episodes, or who simply tend to be prone to debilitating headaches that have no underlying cause.
Naturally, it’s important to stress that if you suffer with frequent unexplained headaches or have started to experience them, but have not yet seen your doctor, it’s important to get checked out to rule out a serious health issue.
The fact is, many of us are prone to headaches that are more frequent than most people experience, and this study should serve to give confidence to those people who have considered undergoing a course of acupuncture, but perhaps haven’t been convinced about how effective it might be.
Acupuncture is an holistic treatment – meaning it treats the body as a whole rather than the individual symptoms – that involves the painless insertion of superfine specialist needles under the skin at certain strategic points on the body.
This stimulates the natural healing energy known as qi that is in all of us, restoring physiological, emotional and psychological balance, improving the immune response and accelerating how we respond naturally to health challenges.
If you’d like to learn more about our acupuncture for chronic tension headaches, frequent headaches, or migraines, please get in touch for an informal, friendly chat – I’d love to hear from you.