Pain effects billions of people

Over 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from chronic pain. Nearly one third of American adults experience chronic pain, and almost one in five surveyed Europeans indicated they have moderate or severe chronic pain. The three most common sources of chronic pain are low back pain (29%), neck pain (16%), and severe headache or migraine pain (15%).

Drugs?

• Over 20% of patients on opioids say they are ineffective
• Over 2 million Americans are addicted to opioid medication
• Opioids cost America over $78 billion per year

Acupuncture, “does it work”?

• For acute pain, a systematic review of 13 trials found that acupuncture was more effective than both sham needling and injection with painkillers. 
• In terms of chronic pain, in the largest study of its kind to date, 454,920 patients were treated with acupuncture for headache, low back pain, and/or osteoarthritis in an open pragmatic trial.
• In a 2-year retroactive survey of over 89,000 patients published in 2016, 93% of patients said that their acupuncturist had been successful in treating their musculoskeletal pain.
• A meta-analysis of 17,922 patients from randomized trials concluded, “Acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain and is therefore a reasonable referral option. Significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicate that acupuncture is more than a placebo.” A follow up study with this data looking at long-term pain relief, found that the benefits of acupuncture persisted 12 months after treatment ended.