Acupuncture: an effective treatment for tension headaches

Acupuncture is an effective treatment for tension headaches, say German researchers from the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research at Technische Universitat in Munich The ancient Chinese therapy cut the rates of headaches by nearly half in a study of 270 people.

"A significant proportion of patients with tension-type headaches benefited from acupuncture" said Dr Wolfgang Weidenhammer, one of the research team. Patients were given 12 sessions of acupuncture over 8 weeks.

The headache rate in patients given the traditional treatment dropped by almost half.

They experienced 7 fewer days of headaches in the four weeks after treatment had finished.

The results of the research, published in the British Medical Journal (29 July 2005) stated that "acupuncture was well tolerated and improvements lasted several months after completion of treatment"