Acupuncture does work for pain relief, says study

Acupuncture works for pain relief a new study by an international team of researchers has shown.

The review of 29 previous studies involving about 18,000 people showed that the alternative treatment is effective for treating chronic headaches, backaches and arthritis.

The Associated Press reported that researchers are still unsure, even after the study, whether or not the effect was simply a placebo.

That said, the study authors found that acupuncture worked better than traditional pain treatment and placebo acupuncture treatments.

"A doctor who has a patient in pain has a lot of options," study author Andrew Vickers, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York told Reuters Health.

"This provides evidence that they would be justified in considering acupuncture."

Unlike other meta-analyses, the researchers used the raw data to correct for statistical problems when comparing various studies for a more precise result.

Yet, GlobalPost has been helping to give acupuncture some bad press lately.

First, a Swiss man used the treatment to infect people with HIV.

Then, a British study was released showing that acupuncture was a little more risky than we thought.

This new study may come as a salve to readers who swear by the procedure.

The funding for the research came from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a part of the National Institutes of Health and the Samueli Institute, a group that funds research on holistic healing.

The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.