Back Pain Miami Acupuncture

Acupuncture for back pain has been used as a valid treatment for thousands of years, in the East at least. In the rest of the world, it has been slower to gain traction but recent studies with promising results have accelerated the take-up of this now popular treatment.

For example, several studies have shown that it can be more cost effective than other back pain treatments, in terms of quality of life. In many countries such as the UK, acupuncture is now offered to back pain sufferers and subsidized by the government. Despite these recent studies showing to the contrary, there are still those who believe that acupuncture is mumbo-jumbo or pseudo-science.

Although there is now a growing body of evidence showing its effectiveness, many point out that Eastern medicine is not “proven”, especially against the backdrop of ideas such as “chi” and “energy meridians”. Miami acupuncture supporters counter this by saying that even if the principle cannot be properly understood or proven, randomized controlled trials which the gold standard of medical studies prove from observations that acupuncture works.

A qualified practitioner will first massage your body and rely on your feedback to find the most painful areas. These are then treated with the needles you may have seen on TV which are actually quite painless. It is normal to need to strip your clothes off down to your underwear. Even if you have only lower back pain, most practitioners will need to see and possibly treat you along your whole spine in order to fix your back problem. Women may need to unclip their bras but complete removal is usually not necessary.

More areas are then treated depending on your anatomy and how your chi channels lie. Several sessions are normally needed for you to get the full benefit of acupuncture. Acupuncturists claim that their skills don’t just relieve pain but actually help to restore the muscle balance that many, if not most, people with back pain have lost.

Results vary from person to person but around half or more report some long term benefit. At first this may not sound much but this is much higher than for other conventional treatments such as physiotherapy and/or drugs which is closer to the 25% mark. Most patients report other benefits from acupuncture with claims of increased well-being, better sleep and less anxiety being fairly common.