Sticking it
to the blues with Acupuncture
Until now, modern medicine could offer people with
depression only a pill or the prospect of talking it out,
sometimes for years. Soon, though, doctors may offer an
alternative - the 5,000 year-old Chinese art of Acupuncture.
In a recent University of Arizona study, clinically
depressed women received eight weeks of acupuncture, in which
practitioners gently pressed needles into specific body points to
correct imbalances believed to trigger illness. The results:
After getting treatments aimed at relieving depression, about
two-thirds were cured of the condition, a rate similar to that
achieved with antidepressants and psychotherapy.
(Researchers ruled out the placebo effect by giving one
group acupuncture at points believed to be unrelated to
depression.)
Although the study, which was funded by the National
Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine, is
preliminary, author John Allen, Ph.D., believes acupuncture
eventually may benefit people for whom other treatments fail.
Unlike antidepressant drugs, for instance, acupuncture has no
side effects. And Allen predicts that it may offer the best way
yet to forestall future episodes of depression. That's a
significant worry, since people who've suffered one bout of
depression have a 50 percent chance of enduring another.
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Last modified:
December 17, 2008
