Period pain, known as “primary dysmenorrhea” in the medical world, normally begins when bleeding starts, but there are some women who experience pain a few days before they start menstruating. Period pains usually last for about 48 to 72 hours, but can carry on for longer. It’s normally worse on the days when bleeding is heaviest.
Acupuncture, the ancient Chinese medicine, was found during studies conducted, to moderate both the intensity as well as the duration of period pains. In fact, acupuncture is known to reduce period pains significantly, for around a year after treatment.
How it helps to relieve pain
In a study conducted on a number of women, more than half of those receiving acupuncture treatment experienced a reduction in the severity of pain of up to 50%. Although treatment was only carried out over a three-month period, some of the women still benefitted from the acupuncture about a year later.
These findings could mean good news for millions of women all over the world, since about four out of five of them suffer from period pains at some point in their lives.
According to researchers, it was the “manual” type of therapy, rather than electro-acupuncture that provided the most pain relief. It is the twisting of the needles in the skin that increases the nitric oxide levels and releases the body’s pain-killing chemicals.
Major findings
74 women between the ages of 18 and 45 years, all of them with confirmed or suspected period pain, were involved in the pilot study. All participants kept a diary of their menstrual cycles and each of them had acupuncture treatments. They were randomly assigned to have one of four treatments, namely electro-acupuncture in high and low frequencies and manual acupuncture, also in high and low frequencies.
Twelve treatments in all were carried out over three period cycles, either three times a week before their period in the high frequency groups of women, or once a week in the low frequency groups. All women underwent treatment within the first 48 hours of menstruating.
Promising results
Since Acupuncture for Period Pain showed such promising results, further, larger trials may be conducted that could develop into solid evidence-based procedures for using acupuncture for treating period pains.
Acupuncture trials on women have shown that pain intensity is reduced, thus improving their quality of life.
The pilot study also found that manual stimulation of acupuncture needles, instead of an electric pulse, as is used by many Chinese in studies for menstrual pain, resulted in the need for conventional pain relievers being reduced, as well as the improvement of other symptoms of periods, such as nausea and headaches.
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