Acupuncture in Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is considered by many healthcare customers nowadays as another option of health care treatment that is outside of the scope of medical practice. As a matter of fact, according to an analysis and survey that was conducted last 2007 in the US, 50% of adults have utilized alternative therapies to treat chronic pains such as migraine (Armstrong & Gossard 2016). One good example of this kind of remedy is acupuncture.

Acupuncture is a type of CAM that originated in China and is being used to treat or reduce ones pain and suffering through insertion of thin needles in specific target points of the body.

It also promotes health, wellness and balance (Lemmon 2018). This just goes to show that acupuncture, just like nursing, is more focused on the fundamental part of healthcare particularly on how human respond to his environment, rather than just concentrating on the disease itself. Hence, when it comes to nursing intervention regarding human responses, acupuncture may be considered as an intervention technology in conjunction with nursing care as long as it is done by the nurse expert in the field.

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Actually, there are CAM schools that offer acupuncture programs for nurses to further expand their practice.

For many years now, acupuncture is widely used over the East and West part of the world (Lemmon 2018). However, the efficacy of acupuncture in regards to managing adult chronic pain, which was always debatable, has now become more controversial. In fact, even though there are already many people who incorporated this treatment in their health care plan, it is still an object of discussions up to this day.

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As a result, the author wants to know how effective this method is in alleviating chronic pains like severe headache. Thus, this research study will show how does acupuncture compared to drug treatment reduces migraine attacks.

There is a recent systematic review issued by Cochrane library regarding 22 trials that were conducted few years ago in regards to the comparison of acupuncture to other therapies such as sham acupuncture, pharmacological treatment and even with a no acupuncture control. Among these experiments, 5 trials had focused on differentiating acupuncture to pharmacological treatment; however, only 3 of them came up with helpful details. People who joined the trial were requested to disclosed the total number of their migraine attacks over a three-month period. The result showed that the migraine frequency were reduced in 57% out of the total participants compared with 46% of population who were taking drugs as a resort. Nevertheless, after six months of experiment there was again a decreased in migraine episodes in 59% acupuncture customers compared with 54% out of 100 candidates taking medications. Moreover, it was determined that patients who were taking acupuncture have reported lesser side effects and more improvement than those who were into drug treatment (Linde et al, 2016).

From what has been discussed above, it can be concluded that acupuncture can be considered as effective as drug treatments. Whilst the available evidence proposed that acupuncture has efficacy in improving ones pain, still it should be combined with other treatments of migraine attacks in order to further decrease the episodes. Furthermore, people who are willing to receive acupuncture may consider this as another treatment option (Linde et al, 2016).

References:

  • Armstrong, L & Gossard, G 2016, Taking an integrative approach to migraine headaches, The Journal of Family Practice, vol. 65, no. 3, viewed 27 August 2019, pp. 165-176.
  • Lemon, R 2018, Acupuncture for pain: 7 questions answered, The Journal of Family Practice, vol. 67, no. 4, viewed 27 August 2019, pp. 224-230.
  • Linde, K, Allais, G, Brinkhaus, B, Fei, Y, Mehring, M, Vertosick, E, Vickers, A & White, A 2016, Acupuncture for the prevention of episodic migraine, viewed 27 August 2019,
Updated: May 19, 2021

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Acupuncture in Complementary and Alternative Medicine. (2019, Dec 17). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/acupuncture-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine-essay

Acupuncture in Complementary and Alternative Medicine essay
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