The role of acupuncture in the treatment of pain syndromes

Dr Ka-Kit Hui is the Wallis Annenberg Professor in Integrative East-West Medicine, founder and director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for East-West Medicine, and Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

What is the role of acupuncture in the treatment of pain syndromes? What other methods should be considered?

Ka-Kit Hui, MD: For thousands of years acupuncture has been used to treat different types of pain. Obviously, research over the last 40 years in the Western world has demonstrated that for many chronic pain conditions it can be quite effective, particularly for some patients with headaches, either tension headaches or migraine headaches, some nonspecific low back pain, but also a lot of the myofascial pain–type of conditions due to repetitive strain.

Clinically, because it’s useful not just for pain, it can also help patients with stress. When you do acupuncture on a particular point called a focal point, it has been shown to light up in the amygdala, which modulates the stress response. Since stress is involved in a lot of pain conditions, anxiety, depression, as well as insomnia, it may also be somewhat alleviated. In a sense, acupuncture can be used not just specifically for a particular pain condition, but because of its ability to address different problems that our patients presented with.

So, in a sense, in our clinical practice acupuncture is used as part of a comprehensive approach, such as teaching patients to maintain a good posture, making sure that they do stretching, teaching them how to do self-massage and use other stress management techniques like mindfulness, meditation, tai chi, yoga, Pilates. Obviously, sometimes you may need to use medications as well.