 Alright, so maybe your back has been killing you or maybe you even threw it out and you're sitting in bed for a couple of days. Well, what do you do now? You might have heard that acupuncture can help you with pain, specifically back pain, but what does the Western medical research actually say on using acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine for back pain? Well, that's what we're talking about in this video here. Hey guys, I'm Alex Hein, a current doctoral student in traditional or classical Chinese medicine. Now in this video, I'm going to share a little bit about the Western biomedical research on using acupuncture for back pain and highlighting a couple studies if you've been curious about whether or not to see an acupuncturist for your pain. Now the very first study done in a Swedish hospital had 50 patients and they had an average pain duration of almost 10 years. Now they were assessed after 1, 3 and 6 months when doing acupuncture. Now the results were that a significant decrease in pain occurred at the first and the third month in the acupuncture group compared with the placebo group and there was a significant improvement in the return to work, quality of sleep and just the overall pain relief. Now in this second study over 2,678 patients were used in a much larger study this time. Now these patients were taken from 13 randomized controlled trials and the clinical outcomes were evaluated by how long they had the pain, the level of disability, spinal flexion and the quality of life. Now compared to no treatment, acupuncture achieved better outcomes in terms of pain relief, disability recovery and better quality of life. This third meta-analysis here looked at 11 randomized controlled trials so there were a total of 1139 patients. Now compared with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, acupuncture was more effective for acute low back pain. Now also in this study it was compared versus a sham, so sham acupuncture, and in this study they also concluded that acupuncture may effectively relieve pain. Now compared with sham acupuncture may more effectively relieve pain and it was associated with very few side effects. Now in another study done over a 6 month period of time, the sample size of 46 patients after completing this trial found that the response was better in the acupuncture group versus placebo nerve stimulation so the control in this case was a nerve stimulation that was supposedly comparable to the feeling of acupuncture. Now in this last meta-analysis of studies where there was over 2,564 patients who were treated by over 1,600 physicians were included in this analysis. Now after 6 months 45% of patients demonstrated clinically significant improvements in their functional ability scores and the average number of days with pain was decreased by half so from 21 days per month to around 10 days per month. So again if you were considering getting acupuncture treatment for your back pain it may make more sense than for example going to your doctor to get painkillers if especially you've already been trying that before. In addition the fact is there are very few side effects linked to acupuncture properly done by a trained practitioner. There are very few side effects it can be done regularly without harm and many people get pain relief within that very first hour and sometimes even within the first very few minutes of just putting the acupuncture needles in. So if this is something you've been wondering about seems a little bit hocus pocusy it may be worth giving it a try. So I hope that helps now in future articles and videos here we're going to be covering acupuncture and Chinese medicine for very specific medical conditions how it can help and in addition I want to share a couple case studies about people that have actually used it who were skeptical beforehand and they weren't sure if it would work. But for now the best way to stay in touch is to come over to my site alexhine.com grab that guide for free which is on five daily rituals to help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. Again that is completely free on my site and otherwise click that monk to subscribe and you can watch the last video right there.