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January 9th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, Jan. 9 (HealthDay News) — “Sham” acupuncture worked
almost as well on migraine patients as three types of traditional
acupuncture, a new study says.
Randomly assigning 480 patients to one of four groups at nine Chinese
hospitals — one sham acupuncture group and three receiving accepted
types — an international team of researchers, including Dr. Fan-rong
Liang at Chengdu University in China, found that between 50 percent and 75
percent of those with migraines felt better after sham or real
acupuncture, respectively, after 16 weeks.
Many prior randomized trials have supported acupuncture’s effectiveness
in treating migraines, which affect up to 8 percent of men and 18 percent
of women in the United States and England, according to background
information in the study. But the researchers noted evidence is mixed on
whether the treatment produces a placebo effect in patients or actually
alleviates symptoms.
Some U.S. doctors, however, felt the bulk of the evidence strongly
stands in acupuncture’s favor.
“I believe in acupuncture for pain,” said Dr. Gayatri Devi, an
attending neurologist in the department of medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital
in New York City. “I think it makes a difference, and while people really
don’t understand how it works, the fact is that it does work. It doesn’t
seem to matter how you put in the needles . . . I think as a treatment for
pain, acupuncture should be embraced.”
The study is published Jan. 9 in the Canadian Medical Association
Journal.
Participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 65, had experienced
migraines for more than a year and had had two or three attacks in the
three months preceding the study. All four groups received 20 treatments,
including electrical stimulation therapy, over four weeks.
Patients in the three traditional acupuncture groups reported fewer
days with a migraine in the four weeks after treatment than the control
group, but the difference was minor, the study said.
In a journal editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Albrecht Molsberger
of Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, said acupuncture should be a
first-line treatment of migraines along with other non-drug therapies such
as biofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy and lifestyle changes.
“It is at least as effective as [preventive] drug therapy, has longer
lasting effects, is safe, seems to be cost-effective and reduces drug
intake with possibly severe unwanted effects,” Molsberger wrote. “All of
this can be achieved even if [acupuncture] point selection is not as
dogmatic and precise as proposed by the Chinese system.”
Dr. Noah Rosen, director of the Headache Center at Cushing Neuroscience
Institute in Manhasset, N.Y., said the frequency of acupuncture treatments
in the study — averaging five per week — wouldn’t likely be replicated
in the United States, where one or two treatments per week would be closer
to the norm.
“What was interesting about this study was looking at the different
styles of acupuncture and showing that the different styles were fairly
equivalent to each other,” Rosen said. “One of the things that’s difficult
for me is figuring out exactly how it applies to the care people receive
in the U.S. . . . and that type of intensive treatment is rarely seen in
my patients here. If we want to follow the model in this study, it would
be very difficult time-wise and financially, I’m sure.”
More information
The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has
more about acupuncture.
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