Acupuncture Helps Fibromyalgia
By Dr. Joseph Mercola
updated on 06/20/2007 at 11:06AM
Article reproduced from http://www.mercola.com/
Acupuncture helped relieve symptoms such as pain and depression in women with the chronic pain disorder fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is a disorder that causes muscle pain, stiffness and fatigue for unknown reasons. It affects about 2% of Americans, mainly women.
In the study, the researchers randomly assigned 60 women who suffered from fibromyalgia into three groups. All patients received amitriptyline, a standard pain modifier used for fibromyalgia, at bedtime for 16 weeks.
In addition, 20 of the women received a once-a-week, 30-minute acupuncture session while a second group of 20 underwent a once-a-week, 30-minute sham-acupuncture session where they were punctured in areas not believed to have any effect on pain.
The patients were evaluated every month for pain, depression and quality of life measures by healthcare workers who were unaware which treatment they were receiving.
The researchers reported that patients who received the real acupuncture were the only ones who showed statistically significant improvement on measures of pain, depression and mental health after the first month.
The results lasted for up to 16 weeks, at which time the patients began regressing slightly and would need reinforcement acupuncture sessions, Feldman said. "It's not a one-time treatment.
Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology San Francisco November 12, 2001
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
In my experience fibromyalgia is nearly always related to some severe emotional trauma that establishes a series of potentially devastating physical processes, which frequently incapacitate the person.
I am not surprised that acupuncture seems to work for it. It is certainly better than the traditional approaches. I am also not surprised that it did not provide long-term benefit.
I have seen far more effective results with NST. More recently EFT, which is acupuncture for psychological issues, has been amazingly effective in providing permanent relief from these problems.
In the November 17 workshop on EFT that I taught I did a demonstration with a woman who had fibromyalgia in her hips that was quite severe, and which prevented her from sitting without pain for three years. The pain was so severe she had beenunable to visit her family for the last several years as she was unable to tolerate the plane ride.
She had not received any benefit from acupuncture. Yet within several minutes the EFT was able to completely and permanently eliminate her pain. It was quite an amazing demonstration as most of her pain was related to the sadness of not seeing her family, the stress and trauma of the accident that caused the pain, and her need to forgive the driver of the truck that hit her.
As the Chinese say, seeing is believing and you can now witness the treatment yourself by obtaining the videos. If you feel that the videos are not useful you can return them for a refund.
EFT is not a "magic bullet." One clearly needs to follow a good eating plan and get proper exercise and rest. However it is hard to imagine this combination not helping nearly everyone with fibromyalgia.
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