How does acupunture works?

How does Acupuncture work?

Back pain 'eased by group therapy sessions'

By Emma Wilkinson
Health reporter, BBC News



Back pain is a common problem
A form of group "talking therapy" is a cheap, effective way to alleviate low back pain, a UK trial has shown.

The positive effect was still seen a year after the short six-session therapy programme, The Lancet reported.

The 600 patients taking part in the trial were also offered standard GP treatment including pain medication.

The sessions were designed to tackle "unhelpful" beliefs around back pain and physical activity and help patients better manage their condition.

Usually people with low back pain - one of the most common complaints GPs deal with - are advised to keep active, offered pain relief where needed and possibly other treatments such as acupuncture.

In the study, 400 people being treated in general practice were offered the six group therapy sessions and 200 people receiving standard care were monitored for a year.

The sessions - based loosely around a technique called cognitive behaviour therapy - were set up to discuss beliefs around doing physical activity and counter negative thoughts about back pain and its restrictions as well as relaxation techniques.

The one-and-a-half-hour sessions were also designed to help people overcome "fear" of hurting themselves more and how to get active again whilst avoiding flare-ups.

A year later, the people who underwent therapy scored significantly more highly on questionnaires designed to measure pain and disability.

Value for money

When looking at the costs, the team found the therapy was relatively cheap when the improvement in quality of life was taken into account, and better than the value for money offered by treatments such as acupuncture.

The researchers, from the Universities of Warwick and Oxford, said effective treatments that produced long-term results are "elusive" in low back pain.

Study author Zara Hansen, a clinical research fellow at the University of Warwick, said healthcare staff, including physiotherapists, psychotherapists and nurses, could learn how to run the course in a couple of days.

"The exciting bit here is that with a lot of back pain interventions, you'll get a feel-good factor and patients will feel better while they're undergoing the treatment but it's a short-term effect.

"But we showed they improve up to six months and then this is maintained for up to a year as they learn to manage their condition."

The team is looking at a project to roll out the programme to other areas of the country.

Dr Graham Davenport, clinical champion for musculoskeletal conditions at the Royal College of GPs, said chronic back pain was an extremely common condition and this sort of therapy could prove extremely useful.

"It's really just about changing people's beliefs.

"It's an excellent and very sensible treatment, the problem is the logistics of getting staff trained to deliver it but if we could overcome that it would be great."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8536698.stm

Wheelchair mobility at the tip of the tongue

(CNN) -- Cruise Bogle, 18, was skimboarding with friends in Delray Beach, Florida, when he took a wave that whipped his board out from under him. Bogle was thrown backward, and his head hit the ocean floor. When friends saw him lying still in the surf, they knew something was wrong and rushed him to the hospital.

"I broke my C4 vertebra and was left paralyzed from the neck down," says Bogle of that fateful day in December 2008. "I then spent two weeks in the ICU at Delray Medical Center and was flown to Shepherd Center on New Year's Eve."

According to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, more than 11,000 Americans sustain spinal cord injuries each year. Although advances have been made in improving the quality of life for people such as Bogle, now a quadriplegic, innovators are always looking for something better.

Bogle became a part of this quest while at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It's one of the largest rehabilitation centers on the East Coast. Bogle was tapped to test drive a new piece of technology.

Shepherd joined forces with scientists from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology to try out a new wheelchair, powered not by a keyboard, buttons or a wand in the mouth, but by the patient's own tongue.

Why the tongue?

"One of the major advantages of the tongue is that it's directly connected to the brain," says Maysam Ghovanloo, assistant professor at Georgia Tech and head of the project. "The tongue is unlike the rest of the body, which is connected to the brain through the spinal cord. A patient who has even the highest level of spinal cord injury can still move his or her tongue like me or you."

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on

-Robert Frost

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