The World Health Organisation lists a wide variety of diseases or disorders for which acupuncture therapy has been tested in controlled clinical trials.
Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown in the past 20 years. Over this period, there have been over 13,000 studies conducted in 60 countries, including hundreds of meta-analyses summarizing the results of thousands of human and animal studies. A wide-variety of clinical areas have been studied, including pain, cancer, pregnancy, stroke, mood disorders, sleep disorders and inflammation, to name a few. Below are evidence summaries for some conditions being researched.
Acupuncture – An Overview
Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, increasing at twice the rate of research into conventional biomedicine.
Acupuncture for Pain
Over 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain. Nearly one third of American adults experience chronic pain and almost one in five surveyed Europeans indicated they have moderate or severe chronic pain.
Plantar Fasciitis
A recent systematic review evaluating all clinical trials on acupuncture for plantar fasciitis concluded that acupuncture is an effective treatment for the condition and that the evidence is comparable to other commonly-used interventions, such as stretching, night splints and dexamethasone
Acupuncture for Cancer Pain
Pain in cancer patients and survivors is very common and can be caused by the cancer itself invading organs, soft tissues (nerves and blood vessels) or bones, or the treatments for cancer.
Acupuncture for Menopause
Menopause is a natural phenomenon and is defined as 12 consecutive months without a period. The average age of menopause in developed countries is 51 years. Although it is a natural process, the years preceding and succeeding the menopause can be associated with various symptoms, ranging in severity from mild to debilitating. The average duration of symptoms is seven years
Allergic Rhinitis
Globally, 10-30% of the population generally suffers from allergic rhinitis, although in some countries the prevalence is as high as 54%. Allergic rhinitis can be either seasonal/intermittent or perennial/persistent. Typical seasonal triggers for allergic rhinitis are pollens, while persistent triggers include animal hair and dust-mites