Laser acupuncture is what you get when you marry ancient healing wisdom to state-of-the art medical technology. It’s a good union: Turns out, the product of this mixed marriage is an effective treatment for painful conditions including carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow, arthritis of the knee, and children’s chronic headaches.
Acupuncture, which practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) have employed for 2,500 years, give or take a few centuries, is performed with hair-thin needles along invisible pathways (meridians) that traverse the body. According to TCM philosophy, qi, or vital energy, flows along these meridians. Sometimes, for any number of reasons, qi flow can become disordered or blocked; acupuncture normalizes qi imbalances that TCM practitioners believe can lead to illness. Acupuncture is clinically proven to be so effective that it’s transitioned from alt med to mainstream and is covered by many insurance plans. It’s used for conditions as diverse as arthritis of the knee and infertility.
I read the other day that Martha Howard, MD, medical director of the Wellness Associates of Chicago (see Dr. Howard’s protocol for beating winter blues) uses laser acupuncture to successfully treat carpal tunnel syndrome, which prompted me to learn more about this new-old treatment. What I discovered intrigued me.
Laser acupuncture 101
Laser acupuncture, which until now I was admittedly not very up on, uses low-level red-beam wavelengths that penetrate the skin shallowly to a depth of just 0.8 to 1 mm—roughly the thickness of five sheets of paper. It’s been around for years: The Chinese began studying it in the early 1970s, and in this country, Margaret A. Naeser, PhD, LAc, a research professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, has been researching it since 1984. In 2002, she proved that laser acupuncture treatments were more effective than sham treatments for reducing carpal tunnel syndrome pain.
My wonky self finds it fascinating that it’s easier to conduct studies on laser acupuncture than it is on needle acupuncture. Here’s why: With needle acupuncture, researchers have to come up with some kind of placebo treatment against which they compare the real treatment. Problem is, even when you needle someone in the “wrong” place (i.e., places not on the correct meridian point for the condition you’re treating) you get real effects that can throw off the study results. A placebo treatment is supposed to be totally inert, which so-called sham acupuncture can never really be.
But with laser acupuncture, you simply blindfold the participant or use some other device so she can’t see what you’re doing. Then you use a real acupuncture laser or a fake one—the participant will feel nothing at all, not even the slight twinge of an acupuncture needle. So you have a truly inert treatment against which to measure the real treatment.
Next page: Gentle enough for kids; effective for pain relief
Comments (3)
I tink I’ll try it because i have arthritis. Regular acupuncture works pretty well but it’s worth the try.
Sara, do you know if laser acupuncture treatments are currently being used on Fibromyalgia patients? Any success stories so far? Thanks
Ive had fibro since this doctor made a big mistake during a surgery in 1991. I was lucky enough to finally see Dr Jay Goldstein(he pinpointed the day I got fibro)who had done so much work towards trying to find a cure for fibro and chronic fatigue. He would try pills, treating several patients at once while we sat in lazy boys. He would give trigger point injections which was amazing at helping pain. His own doctors told him to retire. I then found a pain clinic and I get trigger point injections every few months. This is the thing that has helped me most. Ive tried all those antidepressants that made me feel worse than the pain. Pain pills help. I couldnt go to work without them. I have a lot of intolerance to sitting. I tried two rounds of acupuncture, 12 visits each round. It didnt even help a bit. I had high expectations since trigger points do work. I have a cuddle ewe mattress topper. It is heaven for pain relief. I dont have much pain when Im in bed. I thought I had agoraphobia because I didnt want to leave the house. It was just the pain causing me to stay home. Last week I had no pain to speak of. I thought a miracle had happened. Its back as bad as ever. I do try to exercise. Oh do I pay for it the next day. I think my sister has fibro now and she wont accept the fact she could. I bet a hot tub would help. Im losing my agility and I dont want that! I was quite low on vitamin D, and though it can be toxic, I think it helped a bit. I too found my GP to be very skeptical about fibro. To these people I say, “I wish you could live just one day in my shoes!”