Acupuncture treats depression

Acupuncture produces significant changes in parts of the brain that regulate emotional states and is a biologically plausible treatment for depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders, Australian researchers have shown for the first time.

The scientists, from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the changes in the prefrontal cortex and subcortical nuclei brought about through the stimulation of the body’s acupoints by laser acupuncture.

“This is the first MRI study to find that laser stimulation of a suite of acupoints on the body in healthy individuals produces changes in brain regions that may be relevant to treating conditions such as depression,” said study chief, Scientia Professor Perminder Sachdev, from UNSW’s School of Psychiatry.

“It’s a scientifically rigorous study in a controversial area. It is being followed up with a similar study in depressed individuals, and a clinical trial of laser acupuncture in depression,” said the Professor.

A paper outlining the findings appears in the journal PLoS Online.

Acupuncture and pain relief

While acupuncture is used for all sorts of things like insomnia and weight loss, one of its core uses in Chinese medicine is pain relief. Two recent articles in the British Medical Journal investigated its efficacy.

A review of the best trials of acupuncture has been done, involving 3,000 people, comparing real acupuncture with placebo – where the placebo was often sham acupuncture, meaning needling but not in traditional acupuncture points.

The combined results suggest that in fact the heavy lifting on pain relief is the needling itself. Adding real acupuncture gets you a small gain, but it’s barely noticeable.

If you measure someone’s pain along a ruler from nought to 100mm, where the end of the line is the worst pain you’ve ever had, it’s generally accepted that meaningful pain relief is a move to the left of 10 mm.

The difference between real acupuncture and placebo is 4mm and the combined difference of placebo and real acupuncture is 12 mm. In other words, that’s the total effect when you add the effect of the needle to the effect of putting it into the traditional spot.

The uncomfortable possibility is that inflicting a painful stimulus is the pain reliever, rather than arcane thousand year old knowledge.

It’s not a reason to avoid acupuncture – just know what you’re buying.