Two recent studies compared the effectiveness of various treatments low back pain. One was by researchers from the University of Sydney and was published in the Lancert. The other from the University of Regensburg, Bad Abbach, in Germany was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The German study discovered that twice as many patients gained relief with acupuncture than those that used conventional therapy, medication and exercise. Study participants were dived into three groups, one group underwent between 10 and 15 treatments with traditional Chinese acupuncture, another received drug and exercise therapy, while the third group underwent 'sham' acupuncture, where needles are inserted randomly and less deeply around the painful area while avoiding the medians.

One of the interesting things that came from this study was that the so call "sham acupuncture" produced relief that was almost as effective as the traditional meridian acupuncture. The researchers then showed their lack of understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) by claiming that this indicates that Acupuncture may have had a "superplacebo" effect. In fact TCM has always taught that the local Ah Shi (painfull points) should be needled and it is standard practice in some styles of acupuncture to needle shallowly often without long term retention of the needles, this is particularly true of dry needle techniques to release trigger points. Sometimes people do not understand that the main meridians are just that, there are many other meridians that spread into the tissues and skin just as the capillaries spread from the blood vessels.

The University of Sydney study shows that expensive and potentially risky treatments, such as spinal manipulation and the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as diclofenac or ibuprofen, are no more effective than paracetamol or the placebo treatments.

From the results of these studies it seems clear that if you suffer back pain it is well worth trying acupuncture for its relief.