How Acupuncture Helps Relieve Parkinson’s Disease Symptoms

More than one million people in this country suffer from Parkinson’s disease. It strikes 50 percent more men than women, with an average age of onset of 60 years old. PD is a chronic and progressive neurodegenerative disease that has no cure currently. Many patients take medication to suppress symptoms, such as involuntary shaking. However, more and more people are seeking complementary therapies to relieve their symptoms.

In particular, acupuncture has been found to be very helpful in alleviating PD symptoms. A study appearing in Medicine analyzed the clinical effectiveness of acupuncture on Parkinson’s disease, taking the results of nearly 1,000 articles and studies that showed favorable results for acupuncture in conjunction with conventional treatment compared with conventional treatment alone in the treatment of PD symptoms.

This particular study’s researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to find out if acupuncture did indeed relieve PD symptoms. The result? Acupuncture was found to have significant positive effects. It’s generally considered to be a combination treatment with conventional treatment.

Despite the many positive findings over the years, acupuncture remains difficult to study. Why? Well, it faces many limitations in the research setting, such as being associated with a high placebo effect as is the case with many complementary therapies, according to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Researchers may test typical acupuncture treatments against “sham” acupuncture to identify true benefits. However, this can pose many challenges. When researchers administer acupuncture vs. a placebo, they must “blind” study participants to which treatment they are receiving, which can also be tricky.

Since standardized acupuncture protocols for Parkinson’s don’t exist, there are no strict guidelines as to where to insert the needles, whether to employ the use of electrical current, how long the treatments last, how many sessions are needed and how researchers should best evaluate any potential benefit. All of these can be responsible for discrepancies in results.

Bottom line is, acupuncture is considered a valid complementary approach to Parkinson’s relief.

Contact Metro Detroit Acupuncture

Do you suffer from Parkinson’s disease? Are you looking for a more natural way to treat your worsening symptoms? Get in touch with Metro Detroit Acupuncture today at 248-432-2846. We are the premier acupuncture clinic in Southeast Michigan, owned and operated by Marino Moutafis, nationally certified acupuncturist.