Chronic neck pain often remains a therapeutic challenge for many practising allopathic medicine. so now the alternative forms of medicine has taken its stride. Acupuncture vs massage for treating pain has been widely debated with some practitioners.
Dr. Dominik Irnich of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich has done a study on this basis and found that when it comes to chronic neck pain, acupuncture works better than massage in the short term.In his research which included 177 patients with age ranging from 18 to 85, he randomly assigned them to receive five treatments in a period of three weeks. By the end of one week it was found that the acupuncture group showed a significant improvement in pain reduction and motion compared to others.
But after three months they found that there were no significant differences among the study groups which employed acupuncture or massage therapy. Hence they concluded that acupuncture to be effective for short term gains and not for long.
Irnich told that massage and acupuncture both have local effects but acupuncture seems to have also general effects on health promotion. He also said that the acupuncture has multisystem effects which include inducing the chemicals in the brain called endorphins that has analgesic effects.
