Acupuncture can treat mild to severe fibromyalgia

• A brief regimen of acupuncture appears to offer more than a month of relief from some of the most debilitating symptoms of moderate-to-severe fibromyalgia, a new study suggests.
• The findings are to be presented Thursday by Mayo Clinic researchers at the 11th World Congress on Pain, the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Pain, in Sydney, Australia.
• The scientists cautioned that while acupuncture seems to alleviate some of the pain, chronic fatigue and anxiety that many fibromyalgia patients experience, the treatment should not be viewed as a cure.
• Doctors typically treat the condition with a combination of symptom-based approaches that offer piecemeal pain management, such as stress and sleep counseling, aerobic exercise, and the tricyclic family of antidepressants.
• But, antidepressants are only partially effective and can sometimes provoke side effects, such as excessive sleepiness, dry mouth, constipation and weight gain, Martin said.
• The second group received six sessions of simulated acupuncture in the same time frame.
• Martin and his team found that symptoms -- particularly in terms of pain, fatigue and anxiety -- improved significantly and in larger measure among real acupuncture patients compared with the simulated acupuncture patients.
• You could probably get it at many locations across the country.
• So I'd recommend patients discuss it with their family physician, and get a referral because people come to acupuncture through all different courses of training."
• "These patients often have to leave their social obligations early and are not able to meet all the expectations of friends and family or be able to do their fair share of the housework," said Martin.
• "Yet when they go to the doctor, the doctor says that everything's normal -- and it's very frustrating for the patient.