Can acupuncture really prevent headaches?

Feb 4, 2009 12:34 PM

If you get bad migraines or headaches, you’ll know how much they can interfere with your life. While painkillers and drugs to prevent migraine can help, they may cause side effects. So, it’s not surprising that people turn to alternative therapies.

Acupuncture has long been used to treat or prevent pain. But does it really work? Researchers at the independent Cochrane Library have pooled the results of many smaller studies looking at acupuncture for headache* and migraine* to try to get a clear picture.

The overall answer was clear: Yes, eight week’s treatment with acupuncture can work better than usual treatments to prevent migraines or headaches.

But the researchers found something else interesting, too. So-called "sham" acupuncture, where the acupuncture needles were not put in the usual acupuncture points, and were inserted less deeply into the body, worked just as well as traditional acupuncture.

So what's really happening? It could be a very powerful placebo effect. The placebo effect is where a treatment works because we expect it too. Also, some doctors think that putting needles into the body might trigger the body’s own ways of dealing with pain, regardless of where the needles are placed.

What you need to know. Acupuncture seems to work for migraine and headache. But there’s a lot we don’t know about how it works. If you decide to try acupuncture, make sure you go to a fully-trained professional. It's usually safe, but needles can carry infection if they are not properly sterilized.

—Anna Sayburn, patient editor, BMJ Group

ConsumerReportsHealth.org has partnered with The BMJ Group to monitor the latest medical research and assess the evidence to help you decide which news you should use.

See our Treatment Ratings (subscribers only) for more on preventing migraines, and find out if you're over-medicating your headache.