Allergy season is upon us, and there was recently an article on Time.com reporting on a study about acupuncture and allergies.
The conclusion of the study was that “Acupuncture led to statistically significant improvements in disease-specific quality of life and antihistamine use measures after 8 weeks of treatment compared with sham acupuncture and with [cetirizine (i.e. Zyrtec and Reactine)] alone, but the improvements may not be clinically significant.”
Sham acupuncture is when needles are not placed in relevant points on the body. It is used as a control group in acupuncture studies. I am not alone in the acupuncture world to be itching for acupuncture studies that compare acupuncture point prescriptions against one another, for there are many different strategies to treat allergies, as opposed to compare real acupuncture against sham acupuncture.
Real acupuncture in a clinical trial is not quality acupuncture by any stretch of the imagination. Acupuncture works the best when the points selected are customized to an individual. Acupuncture does not function like medication, which is exactly the same composition of chemicals for each patient. Acupuncture points that work well for one person may do nothing for another, and vice versa. An acupuncture study, in attempts to maintain the “gold standard” of blinded control studies, uses the exact same point prescription for every patient. Therefore, acupuncture will frequently produce clinically insignificant results when practiced in a study, because a study by intention does not practice clinical acupuncture.
Acupuncture is an expensive way to treat allergies, so it is probably only an avenue of pursuit for those who do not respond to, do not wish to, or are unable to take medications. There are Eastern herbal formula designed to treat allergies, which work well in conjunction with acupuncture, which can cut down on the number of visits required and mitigate the cost.
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