Alternative Medicine

Needling Away Headaches

A new study suggests that the ancient practice of acupuncture relieves common tension headaches. In May, the same research group announced that the relatively painless needle procedure could also help prevent migraine headaches, which are often more severe. In both studies, researchers found that acupuncture led to significantly fewer headaches than no treatment at all.

Curiously, however, this traditional method of applying long needles to specific pressure points was no more effective than sticking fewer and smaller needles at random sites around the body.

Dr. Wolfgang Weidenhammer, a German researcher who was involved in both studies, said that the exotic nature of the procedure and frequent contact with a specialist may cause headache sufferers to think they are being helped by the treatment when it is really their own thoughts that are controlling the pain.

"Acupuncture is based on a 'mystic' concept which patients do not understand well, and as a consequence might be more convincing for them," he explained in an e-mail.

Still, he added, acupuncture showed about the same pain relieving benefits as typically seen with conventional treatments.

The findings are not about to settle the debate over the effectiveness of acupuncture, which was invented by the Chinese several thousand years ago and is still used to treat a wide-range of ailments. The variability in acupuncture styles and mixed results from studies have prompted many to question the procedure, said Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, an acupuncture expert at Harvard Medical School.

"Possibly, the devices elicit a response," Kaptchuk said. But he added that the elaborate ritual of needling may explain why fake acupuncture provides even greater relief than sugar pills. "There's a large placebo effect when treating pain with acupuncture," he said.

Weidenhammer, who specializes in alternative medicine at Technische University in Munich, Germany, said that his team tried to eliminate some of this confusion by borrowing standardized methods from both ancient and modern medicine.

The study, published today in the British Medical Journal, randomized 270 patients with severe tension headaches to three treatment groups. Some received traditional acupuncture, which utilizes 25 needles at key points until an irradiating feeling is reached, known as "de qi." The second group received smaller needles in their arms, legs and back. The third group went without any form of acupuncture. All patients were allowed to take medicine if they suffered a headache.

Over an eight-week period, those receiving traditional acupuncture experienced seven fewer days of headaches—almost half of what those who weren't stuck with needles had. However, the group that had smaller needles stuck in them at random spots were not far behind. They experienced 6.6 fewer days of headaches.

While headache relief may be a matter of mind over body instead of the acupuncture itself, Weidenhammer said that smaller and fewer needles could still have a role, regardless if practitioners follow the original Chinese designs.

"It was still acupuncture and we cannot exclude certain physiological effects leading to pain relief," he said.