Acupuncture is one of the oldest healing techniques originating from TCM, which has received much attention worldwide because of its therapeutic benefits. As a specific form of CAM, acupuncture entails piercing the skin with slender needles and making use of valid points to regulate the status of any disease and to treat the signs and symptoms. 

To what extent, in fact, is this technique beneficial, in terms of one’s health? In this blog, we’ll discuss meta-analyses of recent high-quality evidence about the advantages and drawbacks of acupuncture based only on studies of the last five to seven years.

How Acupuncture Works: A Brief Overview

Acupuncture in TCM aims to restore the disturbed energy or flow in the body, also known as Qi or Chi, which is essential for human health. In TCM, if Qi flow is interrupted or restricted, a person may develop a sickness, hence acupuncture is used to improve Qi circulation through particular acupoints by puncturing needles (White et al., 2022). 

On the contrary, western science suggests that acupuncture may affect the neurological system, triggering natural morphine and pain relievers while also facilitating immunological modulation (Zhang et al., 2020).

Evidence-Based Benefits of Acupuncture

Pain Management

The first advantage of acupuncture is that it can help with pain control. The most recent systematic review of RCTs published in The Journal of Pain (2021) examined the effectiveness of acupuncture for chronic pain conditions such as low back pain, osteoarthritis, and migraine. 

The systematic literature analysis found that acupuncture was related to a minor but statistically significant pain alleviation compared to sham acupuncture or conventional care, suggesting that it may have a function in pain management (Vickers et al., 2021). However, it is unclear how acupuncture affects pain perception, although it may regulate endogenous opioid synthesis (Zhang et al., 2020). 

Mental Health and Stress Reduction

It is becoming more commonly utilized to treat somatized mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression. Smith et al. (2020) performed a systematic review to investigate the impact of acupuncture on GAD, selecting RCTs that compared acupuncture paired with conventional therapy to standard treatment alone, and doing a meta-analysis on all of these studies. Even the individual RCTs included in the meta-analysis by Smith et al. (2020) were varied in terms of sample size, participants, and other study features. Furthermore, evidence suggests that acupuncture can improve mood and stress control, most likely due to changes in the HPA axis and neurochemistry (Smith et al., 2020).

Sleep Improvement

Innovation in the field of sleep disorders is required to treat. Millions of individuals suffer from sleep disorders, which appear as an extra symptom of many ailments. As previously said, acupuncture can provide the patients with the necessary remedy since it may help regulate circadian cycles and promote sleep. 

The authors of a meta-analysis published in Sleep Medicine Reviews (2022) used the words several RCTs' to state that acupuncture can effectively improve the quality of sleep in clients with insomnia or other sleep disturbances, but the effect was relatively small and varied across the studies.

Precautions in Acupuncture.

However, being that acupuncture tends to have the potential for improved and enhanced health, one needs to approach it with several limitations. Several authors have pointed out that acupuncture effectiveness is nonuniform and that this treatment acts differently on different people (Zhang et al., 2020). In addition, though such complications are not common, clients may have bruising, soreness, or infections at the needle insertion sites, and are in dire need of treatment from qualified personnel (WHO, 2019).

Directions for the Research and Future Studies

New research has emerged suggesting that acupuncture might have positive effects in such conditions as heart disease and immune system regulation but the use of acupuncture in such conditions is still more exploratory. A study by Lee et al., in Circulation Research (2021) suggested that acupuncture could be beneficial to hypertension management probably through blood pressure modulation, although larger randomized controlled trials were needed (Lee et al., 2021).