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ACUPUNCTURE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR CHRONIC BACK PAIN
A recent study published just last month in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that chronic back pain sufferers would be better off seeing an acupuncturist than a medical doctor.
In this study, a total of 1,162 patients (average age 50), that had experienced lower back pain for an average of eight years, were divided into three groups. One group received standard medical treatment consisting of a combination of medication, physical therapy, and exercise. Another group received acupuncture treatment twice weekly. The third group received "sham" acupuncture, meaning needles were inserted but not exactly at acupuncture points.
After six months of treatment, 27.4% of the patients receiving standard medical treatment reported at least a 33% reduction in pain. 47.6% of the acupuncture patients reported this same degree of improvement, nearly twice as many. Those in the "sham" acupuncture group also did better than the medical group, 44.2% had at least 33% improvement in pain.
So what does all this tell us. This study was designed to determine how effective acupuncture treatment is for back pain. They purposely picked a group of patients with the worst case scenario, over 50 years old and having had pain for 8 years. These are the most difficult cases to get better. The researchers felt that seeing how well acupuncture worked on the most difficult cases, compared to standard medical treatment, was the ultimate test of its effectiveness. If it was effective for the worst cases, it would be useful for less severe ones as well.
Acupuncture came out very well, helping nearly twice as many patients get better than did the standard medical treatment. Even the "sham" acupuncture treatment, where they deliberately missed the correct points, performed significantly better than standard medical treatment.
Backache is the second most common complaint that patients bring to their doctors. Over 80% of the United States population sees a doctor for back pain at some point in their lives. It is the second most common cause for inability to work. All this amounts to an untold amount of suffering. This suffering effects not only those with the pain, but their family, friends, employers, fellow workers, and ultimately, our society as a whole. When a treatment is found that is almost twice as effective as the standard medical treatment, with no negative side-effects, it should become the preferred treatment and be the first approach utilized. Unfortunately, the medical profession is very slow to change and often actively suppresses new methods of treatment, particularly if they come from outside the medical profession itself. You would think that a finding like this, printed in a publication of the Journal of the American Medical Association, with the potential to help such a large number of people suffering in pain, would make the nightly TV news and the front page of the newspapers! Instead, I'd be willing to bet that none of you who receive this email even heard about it. That means that it's up to us, the public, to disseminate this information.
It has been and continues to be my mission in life to promote alternative forms of treatment that work better than standard medical care at removing the suffering of humanity. In this way I try to do my part to decrease the suffering in this world, one person at a time. In recent years, research has validated such treatments as acupuncture, nutrition, meditation, and chiropractic as being valid treatments that often work better than the standard medical treatments for many of the ills that plague mankind. Yet this information is kept under raps by the powers that be. They print it in their journals, but never act on it or spread this information to the society at large. I need your help in this. Tell others about this study. Send everyone you know a copy of this newsletter. Refer people you know with health problems to me or other alternative health practitioners. Try natural alternative treatments for your own health problems. Only a grassroots effort will be successful in bringing this knowledge to everyone.
Yours in health;
Marc A. Imlay, DC, LAc
253-630-1910
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