Acupuncture Stops Headaches, But ‘Faked’ Treatments Work Almost As Well

Headache sufferers can benefit from acupuncture, even though how and where acupuncture needles are inserted may not be important.

Two separate systematic reviews by Cochrane Researchers show that acupuncture is an effective treatment for prevention of headaches and migraines.

But the results also suggest that faked procedures, in which needles are incorrectly inserted, can be just as effective.

“Much of the clinical benefit of acupuncture might be due to non-specific needling effects and powerful placebo effects, meaning selection of specific needle points may be less important than many practitioners have traditionally argued,” says lead researcher of both studies, Klaus Linde, who works at the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at the Technical University of Munich, Germany.

In each study, the researchers tried to establish whether acupuncture could reduce the occurrence of headaches.

One study focused on mild to moderate but frequent ‘tension-type’ headaches, whilst the other focused on more severe but less frequent headaches usually termed migraines. Together the two studies included 33 trials, involving a total of 6,736 patients.

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