In the midst of the opioid crisis, acupuncture has been growing in popularity in the United States. Primarily used for pain management, this ancient Chinese form of alternative medicine — which involves thin needles being inserted into the skin — has gained support from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicaid as a viable treatment in recent years.
Researchers are still trying to determine whether acupuncture can be a beneficial treatment for various health ailments. However, for those who may be seeking alternative options for hard-to-treat conditions, here are four areas in which acupuncture may help.
Acupuncture for easing pain
Heidi Boyson had suffered from chronic low-back pain for a decade when she tried acupuncture for the first time in England.
She’d already tried chiropractors, physical therapy, and medication. “Nothing worked,” she told Healthline. “The acupuncturist put needles in my head, and I fell asleep, which was great. When I woke up, I was much more relaxed.”
After just one visit, Boyson says her pain became manageable.
Western research has shown that acupuncture can be effective in managing pain. Exactly why it works is still unclear, though there are several theories.
The first written account of acupuncture, in “The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine,” dates to 100 B.C. in China.
The theory behind the practice suggests the stimulation of specific spots prompts the body to release a flow of energy, or “qi,” which travels through “meridians.”
The Western explanation: The needle stimulates a nerve, which sends a signal to the brain to release beta-endorphins. These chemicals work as the body’s own opioids, lowering pain thresholds.
Another theoryTrusted Source proposes acupuncture changes cells in connective tissue around the pressure points in lasting ways that lead to less pain.
There is also evidence, according to a 2016 studyTrusted Source, that stimulating the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain stem to the colon, may lower inflammation throughout the body. Inflammation is closely tied to chronic pain.
States looking to cut opioid prescriptions have been experimenting with extending Medicaid coverage for acupuncture as another option for pain treatment. Rhode Island, Oregon, and Ohio all have programs that extend coverage in part.
When Vermont commissioned a small pilot study on acupuncture for chronic pain in its Medicaid population, it concluded that 32 percent of people taking opioids for pain cut back. They were eligible for up to 12 treatments over two months.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has trained more than 2,800 providers of “battlefield acupuncture,” a protocol that involves the ear to relieve pain.
According to Dr. Charles Levy at the Gainesville VA center in Florida, the protocol has helped with headaches, acute and chronic back and musculoskeletal pain, and neuropathic pain.
The result depends dramatically on the pain, the practitioner, and the patient.
Last year, when Boyson was coping with occasional migraines, she went to an acupuncturist in New York City.
“Traditional medicine wasn’t helping, and [the acupuncturist] was lovely and affordable,” Boyson said, adding she’d feel good after each visit, but this time the effects didn’t stick.
The Cochrane CollaborationTrusted Source looked at seven studies that compared the effect of acupuncture against a sham (placebo) acupuncture procedure to treat tension headaches.
The group that received the sham (placebo) procedure had headaches 7 to 16 days a month, while those who had the real acupuncture suffered two fewer days with headache. Everyone had a minimum of six weekly treatments.
Narda Robinson, an osteopath who uses acupuncture, says that when she treats headaches, she does a careful examination of not only the patient’s head, but also the neck and back and the patient’s posture.
“I am accustomed to whole-person medicine — not focusing on one part at the exclusion of others,” she told Healthline.
Treating neurologic injury
Robinson, who runs CuraCore Integrative Medicine & Education Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, is also a veterinarian.
She’s seen acupuncture work wonders with both people and dogs suffering from nerve damage.
Stimulating acupuncture points in dogs with paralyzed hind legs has allowed them to walk, she says.
“My veterinary colleagues and I witness remarkable turnarounds in dogs with thoracolumbar spinal cord injury from disc disease” she said.
Another remarkable turnaround happened to an environmental scientist in his 50s who came to see her for acupuncture.
Because of a car accident 20 years earlier, he couldn’t smile fully on one side of his face or clearly pronounce words. His face, hands, and feet were numb.
Soon after she treated him, he began to regain sensation and motor skills he had been told would never return.
“At every visit, he’d report on how he could now feel the fine edges of the computer keyboard, use his fingers well enough to button his own shirt, and smile as well as speak more normally,” Robinson said.
Can acupuncture reliably help serious neurological problems?
“It’s certainly something that should be explored more intensively in human spinal cord injury clinics, both to facilitate recovery and reduce the need for surgery,” Robinson said.
However, the research so far has been mostly inconclusive. A 2015 reviewTrusted Source of using acupuncture to recover after a spinal cord injury found only 12 studies, which did show improvements in motor function and functioning.
Yet a 2018 reviewTrusted Source of whether acupuncture helps stroke survivors found more than 30 studies on the subject, and it was inconclusive.
Nevertheless, Robinson strongly disagrees. She maintains that the evidence is promising enough. She believes people with nerve damage should be offered acupuncture, especially if they have few other options.
The same reasoning might apply to hard-to-treat pain.
In 2018, four U.S. anesthesiologists conducted a reviewTrusted Source of nondrug treatments for fibromyalgia (a condition marked by fatigue and pain in many spots of the body).
They concluded that meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy were more promising than acupuncture. Because it rarely causes any harm, they wrote it also “should not be discouraged.”
Promoting weight loss
New strategies to lose weight are usually a fad. There is no gold-star research — large, controlled, randomized studies — to support a case for acupuncture to shed pounds.
However, there’s some early positive evidence.
Two points in the ear have traditionally been associated with appetite. A 2017 reviewTrusted Source found 18 randomized controlled studies of ear acupuncture for weight loss. These were small studies. The largest study only involved 200 participants.
The review concluded that ear acupuncture was linked to an average loss of about 3 pounds. Treatments that lasted longer than six weeks produced the best results.
A number of studies are being conducted on the effect of a person’s microbiome — the bacteria inside the body — on weight gain. A small Shanghai study found that acupuncture reduced the number of Bacteroidetes, which are more abundant in those who are obese.
Despite the widespread use of probiotics, we don’t currently have targeted ways of changing our gut flora.
In this study, among the 30 women who received acupuncture, the average BMI dropped from close to 28 to a little over 25. Their Bacteroidetes levels also fell. A small control group didn’t lose much weight or see the same favorable changes in their gut flora.
There is some data suggesting that electro acupuncture is more effective than needles alone for weight loss, according to another 2013 overviewTrusted Source.
Acupuncture may reduce inflammation, which is related to obesity as well as pain. If it relieves pain or anxiety, that could help people avoid overeating too.
“I don’t see acupuncture as having that big an effect on obesity itself, but more on addressing problems with pain and mood,” Robinson said.
Taming nausea
According to a 2017 review, the National Cancer Institute and other major medical organizations in the United States and Europe regard acupuncture as an appropriate treatment for post-chemotherapy nausea and vomiting.
A systematic reviewTrusted Source of 30 randomized and controlled trials involving more than 2,500 volunteers concluded that stimulating various acupuncture points cut nausea and vomiting within hours or a day after surgery, which is a common reaction to anesthesia.
Ongoing research into acupuncture as treatment
The National Institutes of Health (NIH)Trusted Source supports research on acupuncture as a treatment for a range of conditions, including hot flashes, pain related to chemotherapy, and tinnitus.
The opioid crisis has also restored interest in acupuncture not just for pain relief, but also for relaxation to help wean people from addictions.
More research is needed to fully understand all the benefits acupuncture might offer. Until then, people seeking alternatives for hard-to-treat conditions may find relief through this Eastern approach to medicine.
“Conventional medicine is at a crossroads,” Robinson said. “The drugs-and-surgery dominant approach [to pain] is costly and incomplete” and patients end up “misdiagnosed and overmedicated for problems medical acupuncture” could help.
