A recent study shows that acupuncture can assist in giving relief to those people having persistent headaches. The study suggests that using acupuncture therapy in addition with the conventional medication for headache can aid in giving additional relief to these patients.

Some other studies have even revealed that ‘sham’ acupuncture treatment in which blunted needles, that do not pierce the body but only press the skin, are used can also prove effective.

The study done for finding out the effectiveness of acupuncture for headaches, published in the journal Cephalalgia, was conducted on about 15,000 adult patients with chronic headaches, migraine or tension-type headaches for a year or more suffering from headaches at least twice a month. It was one of the largest studies ever done on this scale.

About 3,200 of them stayed with their usual care of being on their medication, and the rest began with only acupuncture treatments, getting 15 sessions over 3 months. They all were re-evaluated after 6 months.

The study discovered that acupuncture patients showed remarkable improvement and more so than ‘only medication’ patients. Their average number of headache days dropped to 4.7 by this study’s end, as compared to the 8.4 they reported before, whereas the medication patients group almost remained same with a little change to 7.5 from 8.1 days, as reported by researchers led by Dr. Stefan N. Willich, head in Charite University Medical Center situated in Berlin.

Acupuncture is a very old method used in Chinese medicine for various diseases. You should seek out an acupuncturist and see for yourself how it can benefit your health.