Back Pain and Acupuncture
Your Pain
Acupuncture, treats YOUR Back Pain and how it affects you.Every person experiences Back Pain differently. This is because we are all individuals and respond differenlty to pain situations, none is wrong or right – it is your experiance.
Back pain can range from a muscle aching to a shooting, burning or stabbing sensation. Also, the pain can radiate down a leg. Bending, twisting, lifting, standing or walking may make it worse.
Pain Reasons
You can be young or old with chronic or acute back pain, from an accident, arthritis, wear and tear, muscle, bones or ligaments or a combination of one or all. Back pain can be a side effect from other conditions such as pregnancy, immobility, surgery, weight issues ect. Because Traditional Five Element Acupuncture treat you as an individual and unique human being, you receive the treatment that is right for you.
Anxiety and Depression
Back pain and any other pain can cause Stress, Anxiety and Depression, for many reasons. Firstly the pain, then maybe lack of sleep, spasms, difficulty with daily living activities, difficulty with work, the possibility of changing lifestyle and work around a chronic pain condition. As Traditional Five Element Acupuncture treats you Holistically in Body Mind and Spirit we can address these concerns too.
GP
It is a good idea to speak to your GP about your back condition as well as having acupuncture treatment, in case you need further investigations
Research
Below is information about trails to show acupuncture can help pain.
Acupuncture Treatment
For more information about how Traditional Acupuncture can help your Back Pain and wellbeing contact Hannah on https://www.southwellacupuncture.co.uk/contact/
Hannah is A Member of the British Acupuncture Council (MBAcC)
The British Acupuncture Council is committed to ensuring that all patients receive the highest standard of professional care during their acupuncture treatment. Our Code of Professional Conduct governs ethical and professional behaviour, while the Code of Safe Practice sets benchmark standards for best practice in acupuncture. All BAcC members are bound by these codes.
All members are accountable to the BAcC for their professional behaviour and the codes are rigorously enforced.
For more information contact; https://acupuncture.org.uk/
Back Pain (2022) Systematic reviews
From BAcC Website – https://acupuncture.org.uk/fact-sheets/back-pain-acupuncture/
Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Update of an Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis (2018) [1]:
Back pain was one of the conditions included in this large systematic review, along with osteoarthritis of the knee, neck pain, migraine, tension headaches, and shoulder pain. This review received data from a total of 20,827 patients in 39 trials.
As far as we are aware, this is the largest high-quality systematic review that evaluates acupuncture for any condition. In addition to size, the review’s strengths are that it included only high-quality clinical trials and had access to the individual patient data. In many systematic reviews the meta-analysis combines the summary data from clinical trials: for example, the mean (average) pain scores.
The meta-analysis in this systematic review used the pain scores from each participant, therefore, the analysis has greater statistical ‘precision’. In summary, the Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Update of an Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis is the most reliable assessment of acupuncture to date.
Conditions of Review
For the above chronic pain conditions the review found:
• acupuncture is superior to ‘no acupuncture controls’
• acupuncture is superior to placebo
• the clinically relevant effects of acupuncture on chronic pain persist overtime
Controls
‘No acupuncture controls’ refers to medication or physiotherapy or exercise and advice. In other words, no acupuncture controls refers to the therapies that many people with chronic pain are currently offered.
Placebo
Some people worry acupuncture is purely a placebo, and that responding to treatment indicates that the pain was ‘all in their heads’. This systematic review demonstrates the benefits of acupuncture cannot be explained only by placebo effects.
Benefits of Acupuncture
Naturally, many people want to know whether the benefits of acupuncture last over time or just make them feel better for a few days. This review demonstrates clinically relevant benefits last for year. Very few clinical trials have followed participants for more than a year, so whether there are benefits beyond a year has yet to be fully investigated.
Trails
The review combined clinical trials that investigated back pain with neck pain trials. The two conditions were evaluated as musculoskeletal pain. There were 12 trials that compared acupuncture to no acupuncture controls for musculoskeletal pain. Of these 12 trials, nine investigated acupuncture for back pain and there were three neck pain trials.
In all 12 trials acupuncture was superior to no acupuncture controls. In eight of these the difference was statistically significant. In other words, the difference was probably not due to ‘chance’. It is harder to achieve a statistically significant result if the number of people treated in the trial is small.
All four trials that were not statistically significant were relatively small, between 21 and 171 participants. For comparison, other trials included in this review had over 2,500 participants.
Less Pain
The overall result for musculoskeletal pain (back and neck) showed those receiving acupuncture had less pain compared to no-acupuncture controls with an effect size of 0.54 (95% CI, 0.50-0.57).
Effect size
The effect size is a standardised way of comparing the size of the effect between groups. For example, the difference between the mean (average) change in pain scores in the groups. It quantifies how much more effective the treatment, acupuncture, is compared to a control group usually sham acupuncture or no acupuncture control (see Commentary page).
By convention, 0.2 is considered a small effect, 0.5 medium and 0.8 large. In the Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Update of an Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis, for all the chronic pain conditions combined, the effect sizes were:
• acupuncture compared to no acupuncture controls 0.5
• acupuncture compared to sham acupuncture 0.2
To illustrate effect sizes in more clinically applicable terms the authors give the following example. If baseline pain score [before treatment] in a typical clinical trial was 60 on a scale of 0–100, with a standard deviation of 25, follow-up scores might be:
• 30 among acupuncture patients
• 35 in a sham acupuncture group
• 43 in a no acupuncture control group
Cochrane Review: acupuncture for chronic nonspecific low back pain [2]
A recent Cochrane review concluded:
However, acupuncture was more effective than no treatment in improving pain and function in the immediate term. Trials with usual care as the control showed acupuncture may not reduce pain clinically, but the therapy may improve function immediately after sessions as well as physical but not mental quality of life in the short term
Clinical guidelines
Three out of four of these clinical guidelines find in favour of using acupuncture for low back pain.
Scottish Intercollegiate Guidance Network: SIGN 136 (2019). Management of Chronic Pain Recommends acupuncture for low back pain.
NICE Guidelines NG59 (2016, updated 2020). Low back pain and sciatica in over 16s: assessment and management
Does not recommend acupuncture
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Comparative Effectiveness Review Number 227. Non-invasive Non-pharmacological Treatment for Chronic Pain: A Systematic Review Update [link pdf]
Recommends acupuncture for low back pain
The Joint Federal Committee of Physicians and Health Insurance Plans in Germany (Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss, G-BA)
Recommends acupuncture for lower back pain. [link pdf – German]
Please see the Commentary for discussion on the interpretation of back pain clinical trials. – https://acupuncture.org.uk/fact-sheets/back-pain-acupuncture/#
Acupuncture Treatment
For more information about how Traditional Acupuncture can help your Back Pain and wellbeing contact Hannah on https://www.southwellacupuncture.co.uk/contact/
