Acupuncture is a form of complementary wellness that involves placing needles in meridian lines around the body to help improve health, wellbeing and specific medical problems. Now, new research appears to indicate that acupuncture could even help patients to recover following various surgeries, including Caesarean sections.
The study, published in the Chinese Medical Journal, followed the work of researchers who carried out acupuncture or electro acupuncture on a group of 60 women. There were also women in the group who belonged to the control, and did not have the treatment carried out on them. Astoundingly, the scientists found that the women who had received acupuncture therapy appeared to be suffering far lower levels of pain two hours after surgery than the women who had received no acupuncture. The women who received acupuncture asked for morphine an average of 10 minutes later than the women who had not, and they also used around 30 to 35 percent less morphine in the 24 hours following on from their surgery. As a result of this, they also suffered from far fewer opioid-related side effects.
Acupuncture is being supported by more and more scientific research of this type, and the effects of using acupuncture to treat pain are becoming better understood. The treatment is even now covered by some health insurance plans.
This is not the first study that has linked acupuncture to decreased use of painkillers after surgery. Another study looked at the results of using acupuncture either before or just after surgery, and found that whether the acupuncture was carried out before or after the actual surgery, the result was still a much lower level of pain-relief use in the patients after their surgery. Further research work now needs to be undertaken to find out how doctors can best use this new knowledge.
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