An article intended for practitioners of Chinese medicine:

I want to write here about a study that is not only related to gastroenteritis (although it is), but I think it's important for people to know about this study because its results are truly amazing.

Several years ago, I was supposed to present it at a meeting of the Gastroenterology Institute at Ichilov, and its results seemed so illogical to me that at the last minute I simply didn't dare present it.

After a few days, I showed it to a gastroenterologist I had studied with and she said that the results made a lot of sense in her opinion, so I gathered courage and presented it at the meeting (the responses were good).

The study examined which is more effective for acute pain: morphine or acupuncture

For this purpose, 300 patients who came to the emergency room due to abdominal pain, headaches, lower back pain, and more were included in the study.

Their pain intensity was assessed before the start of treatments and after 5, 10, 20, 30, 45, and 60 minutes.

Treatment success was defined as a 50 percent reduction in pain intensity compared to baseline.

The researchers also examined how long it takes for the pain to decrease by 50 percent and what the side effects of the treatment (acupuncture and morphine) were.

The patients were divided into two groups - an acupuncture group and a morphine group (the acupuncture points are attached below).

The results:

* 92% of those who received acupuncture achieved a 50 percent improvement in pain compared to 78% in the morphine group.

*In the acupuncture group, it took an average of 16 minutes for the pain to decrease by 50%, compared to an average of 28 minutes in the morphine group!

* A total of 89 people experienced minor side effects in the study, 85 of whom were in the morphine group and only 4 in the acupuncture group (three had a broken needle and one fainted).

The study was published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine and certainly shows the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture.

Link to the study for those interested in delving into it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27475042/

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