Many people are quick to dismiss the power of alternative therapies to cure pain and suffering, as is the case with acupuncture. But with science now saying otherwise, people may have to reevaluate their opinions.
An excellent case in point is a new study published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. The study, which was published in July of this year, compared acupuncture against morphine in the management of acute pain.
Researchers randomly selected 300 emergency departments and split them into two even groups. The first group was subjected to acupuncture in order to treat their acute pain, while the second group was given morphine.
The results were even better than researchers imagined. Patients who were treated with acupuncture experienced a whopping 92 percent reduction in their pain, while the morphine group experienced a 78 percent reduction. Not only that, the acupuncture group had a much faster pain recovery time. While the morphine group took an average of 28 minutes to recover from their pain, the acupuncture group recovered from their pain in an average of 16 minutes.
So, the alternative treatment was both more effective in reducing pain and faster. So what’s the catch? There doesn’t appear to be one! Not only did acupuncture blow the conventional medical treatment out of the water on those fronts, it also had fewer drawbacks. Of the one in three patients who experienced adverse side effects from the treatment, 57 percent of these were in the morphine group and just 2.6 percent were in the acupuncture group.
The study went on to suggest that acupuncture “should be considered, especially in today’s increasingly complicated and polymedicated patients, to avoid adverse drug reactions.” Let’s dig a little deeper and find out whether acupuncture really is the better choice for pain treatment in hospitals and ERs.
Morphine and common side effects
Morphine is an opioid (meaning opiate-based) medication used to treat moderate to severe pain. If you’ve ever had to go into the hospital for surgery, chances are you were placed on a strong dose of morphine post-op. After getting my tonsils out when I was 19, I was eased back into the world of the living with a blast of morphine, which left me feeling pretty whacky but largely devoid of pain.
While morphine is undoubtedly effective in alleviating pain, it’s potentially lethal side effects make it a very dangerous drug indeed. In 2014, more than 28,000 Americans died from opioid overdose, with 14,000 of those deaths involving prescription opioids. According to the California Department of Public Health, prescription opioids like morphine were only prescribed for relieving acute pain. Today, however, they’re increasingly being used to treat chronic pain, such as back pain or osteoarthritis. Aside from the addictive nature of morphine, this is putting many people at risk.
The United Kingdom is no better. This article is one of many which highlights the unprecedented number of deaths associated with morphine overdose or side effects under expert supervision in hospitals. The article indicated that three elderly patients in a Portsmouth hospital were killed due to a prescription of lethal doses of morphine, while two other patients in the same hospital died after being administered “suitable” doses of the drug.
More common side effects
When you look at the statistics around morphine, none of this should come as any real surprise. Side effects associated with this opiate are staggering. They are so numerous that I’ll only list a small fraction to give you some idea of just how risky morphine is:
- Abdominal pain
- Stomach pain
- Blurred vision
- Bulging soft spot on the head of an infant (I didn’t even know it was legal to prescribe morphine to babies!)
- Loss of color in vision
- Chest pain
- Confusion
- Coughing
- Reduced urination
- Dizziness
- Lightheadedness
- Fainting
- Irregular heartbeat
- Headaches
- Hives
- Rashes
- Itching
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Nervousness
- Pounding in the ears
- Swelling of the eyelids, lips and tongue
- Severe constipation
- Shortness of breath
- Sweating or chills
- Loss of consciousness
- Painful urination
- Unusual bleeding or bruising
Wow. I for one will never be using morphine again. With such a horrifying list of potential side effects (and that’s certainly not all of them!), I almost think it’d be better to deal with the pain than put that into your body.
What is acupuncture?
Acupuncture is a popular traditional Chinese medicine where thin needles are lightly inserted into the surface of the skin. While it has probably been around for far longer, the first documented utilization of acupuncture dates back to around 100 BCE in ancient China.
Today, acupuncture is receiving something of a revival in the Western world. While many Asian cultures have consistently used acupuncture throughout the past 2,000 or more years, acupuncture was quickly pushed aside in Western cultures with the rise of modern medicine. People began to cast off such traditional treatments in favor of “more effective” aggressively-endorsed medical drugs.
But with an increasing body of evidence showing the dangers and drawbacks of using prescription drugs to treat anything from back pain to migraine headaches, many people are beginning to see the merit in less invasive traditional methods. Acupuncture is now commonly sought out for pain relief, lower back pain, shoulder stiffness and knee problems. Some American physicians prescribe acupuncture treatment in conjunction with conventional medical treatments for improved recovery.
How acupuncture works
Theories as to how acupuncture actually works vary considerably. One major school of thought is that acupuncture operates via neurohormonal pathways. Needles are placed on specific points of the body in order to stimulate certain nerves. These nerves send signals to the brain, which then releases neural hormones such as beta-endorphins. This contributes to feelings of happiness and alleviation of stress, which reduces the pain a patient is feeling.
Another hypothesis is that acupuncture reduces pro-inflammatory markers in the body. Certain studies suggest that acupuncture results in a significant reduction in pro-inflammatory proteins in the body, which decreases inflammation and alleviates pain.
Whatever the reason, the potential side effects of acupuncture are considerably less scary than those of morphine. Listed “side effects” of acupuncture are limited to:
- Soreness
- Organ injury
- Infection
Some people may experience soreness after acupuncture for the first time, but that soreness is from most accounts almost unnoticeable. Both organ injury and infection can occur if the acupuncture practitioner pushes in the needles too deep or doesn’t use new needles each time, respectively. But because the acupuncture practitioners in the United States are closely monitored, this is unlikely to happen.
More acupuncture studies
Aside from the study referenced earlier in this article, there is a huge range of scientific literature validating the claims that acupuncture can alleviate pain. Here are just a few passages from those studies, chosen at random:
- “Acupuncture has an intrinsic analgesic (pain relieving) effect in the clinical treatment of tennis elbow pain.” – Journal of Rheumatology, 1993
- “Several Cochrane reviews of acupuncture for a wide range of pain conditions have recently been published. All of these reviews were of high quality. Their results suggest that acupuncture is effective for some but not all types of pain.” – Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2011
- “Acupuncture was superior to conventional physical therapy (with regards to chronic back and neck pain).” – Acupuncture and Electro-Therapeutics Research, 1978
- “Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is, therefore, a reasonable referral option.” – Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012
As with everything, keep an open mind and why not give it a go? You might be surprised by the results!
— Liivi Hess
Struggling with weight problems? Find out why acupuncture might just be that miracle you’ve been hoping for!
I choose Morphine for the serious pain.
Now show me the evidence for acupuncture vs opioids for CHRONIC, INTRACTABLE PAIN. You won’t see the same results there, even if you were able to do the studies. And good luck getting insurance to pay for acupuncture, placing it out of reach of patients.
Being as this very small and narrow study was subject to ER acute pain, and not chronic pain, I would ascertain that this study is not a reliable limitus test. Thus far, there have been no factual studies that prove that alternative treatments for chronic pain are more effective than medicinal treatments. And, with the vast majority of insurance companies refusing coverage of said treatments, and extremely high cost of such, a cheaper proven treatment plan is always a better alternative. In most controlled studies, the benefits of alternative therapies have proven to be temporary and extremely subjective. The difference between acute and chronic pain, is vast and wholly dependent upon the subject and the disease//njury. I find the statement made by the author regarding morphine, in regards to never taking it again, extremely naive and uneducated. You would be hard pressed to find any chronic pain patient, that wants to be on an opiod on a regular daily basis, most before diagnosis rarely took anything stronger than Tylenol. But, to those patients the tradeoff for some semblance of a normal life and less severity of pain, which affects more than just the body, is that they must take strong medications to achieve that. I juxtapose that those who haven’t had the misfortune of walking in the shoes of a cp patient, should be the very last to give an opinion as to what treatments should be used for pain. I find it extremely insulting and actually quite ignorant to even assume that one would have the knowledge as to what the actual day to day life is for someone who is ill, and their care is considered palliative.
I am a board-certified family medicine doctor of 33 years. Did you know that surgeons invented the worthless and incorrect idea of trying to fix pain by fixing parts of the skeleton?
Did you know it is impossible to treat physical pain complaints with drugs or surgery?
Did you know that it is impossible to remove body parts to treat physical pain complaints?
Did you know that the skeleton, joints, vertebrae, discs, facets, central or peripheral nerves cannot cause physical pain complaints?
Did you know that some people think pain is located in the brain and not in the entire person?
Did you know that pain is an electrical force which is entirely invisible to the human eye or technology?
Do you realize that radiologic evidence is technically forensic evidence and carries less value than the patient’s spoken words?
I’ve studied every aspect of “acupuncture” for the past 18 years and have re-discovered that the essence of the “actions” of the thin filament needles is the perfect medicine for muscles. A thin needle is a massage tool or an extension of your finger’s to reach into the muscle bundles.
Massage with fingers and needles are the only ways to address the most common muscle pathology, the source of most all physical signs, symptoms, ailments, and complaints.
Why?
This information is as True as humanly possible, yet no one has told you how to view and or understand it. Muscles are designed to contract and in doing so act as a dynamic shock absorbing system. Muscles will absorb and reflect energy as they are doing their job. All this work will beat up and injure muscle cells and tissues. Muscles have a mandatory daily requirement that we stretch them out, knead them out and massage them out so that nature can heal them more thoroughly.
If we don’t apply daily doses of therapeutic physical therapy on and into our muscles, these wounded cells and tissues will send out distress and help signals. These wounded tissues will send out the stress and help messages until they get what they need -forever. Muscles need to be kneaded on a regular basis, or they will begin to falter and fail to support a quality of life. The only “medicine” that will work for inside these wounded muscles come in the form of therapeutic physical therapy.
Massage is entry level therapeutic physical therapy.
Chiropractic and spinal adjustments are mid-level therapeutic physical therapy.
Various aspects of thin acupuncture needle intramuscular stimulation are high level therapeutic physical therapy.
There are aspects of using a hypodermic needle in place of the acupuncture needle as maximum level therapeutic physical therapy.
If one makes the necessary corrections to their knowledge and information, it will become apparent. One of the hardest most difficult things to do to become illuminated you will have to eliminate a lot of the incompleteness is that you have thought true.
The skeptical side of the story is that I’ve discovered that acupuncture is deemed experimental and investigational by the FDA. Why would the FDA describe such a critical, pivotal treatment as investigational?
There is shenanigans are going on – so it is best that you all educate yourself, be aware what’s genuine and false and don’t believe the medical boards, medical academics, AMA, FDA, Health and Human Services, NIH and Wall Street because they have all been infected by profiteers and greed.
These entities still believe that is okay to remove body parts and opium derivatives to treat physical muscle pain complaints that can easily be addressed with massage and needle intramuscular stimulation.
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