Our country is reaching an epidemic problem with opioid addiction and other pharmacological treatments for pain often fall short. By using pharmaceutical treatments we risk addiction and toxicity.
Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in the US, with 52,404 lethal drug overdoses in 2015. Opioid addiction is driving this epidemic, with 20,101 overdose deaths related to prescription pain relievers, and 12,990 overdose deaths related to heroin in 2015.
Acetaminophen overdose sends as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room annually and results in 33,000 hospitalizations a year, federal data shows. Acetaminophen is also the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure, according to data from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes for Health.
The problem is truly staggering. What if there was a better way to treat pain entirely? There is, it’s called acupuncture, and it has virtually no downside!
As more well trained acupuncturists have begun practicing in the United States we are seeing a growing amount of research. There have been some recent meta-analysis performed looking at high quality studies of acupuncture for common pain conditions and the results are overwhelmingly positive.
It’s not sham, it’s not placebo, it’s effective medicine. What is truly amazing is that many of the studies find that the benefits are ongoing, lasting over a year after treatment ceases.
A very interesting summary of the scientific validation of acupuncture’s effectiveness was published today on Medscape. You can read about its proven benefits here.
Here at Origins Medicine we practice acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and Functional medicine together. The synergy is phenomenal for pain. You can read more about our unique approach for effectively treat the most complicated chronic pain cases in my previous blog on the subject here.
If you are suffering, or know someone who is, please share this. Conventional medicine’s current strategy for treating pain isn’t working and people are dying. It’s time for a new approach.
In Health,
Duncan Macdonald, L.Ac.
