Want To Tackle Dental Anxiety? Try Acupuncture

Acupuncture has shown a significant promise in treating dental anxiety (an anxiety that is experienced before going to the dentist), finds a new study.

Highlights

Acupuncture could be new possible treatment for tackling dental anxiety.
An estimated 30 percentage of people worldwide are suffering from dental anxiety which is nothing but anxiety before going to the dentist.
After acupuncture was used, dental anxiety dropped by eight points.

Acupuncture may help reduce dental anxiety in patients who experience them, finds a new study. The findings of this study are published in the journal of European Journal of Integrative Medicine.

This type of anxiety has been reported to be seen in nearly 30% of the adult population worldwide. Nausea, difficulty breathing and dizziness are some of the symptoms that could be experienced by the patients.

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‘When acupuncture was used as an anxiety treatment, it was seen that dental anxiety levels dropped by eight points, when it was measured in points scale. ’

Sharp needles, anesthetics or the fear of pain are some of the reasons behind dental anxiety.

In review with 800 patients in 6 trials, researchers from the University Of York measured anxiety levels of dental patients using point scale. From this they found that after acupuncture, the dental anxiety levels dropped by eight points, leading them to believe acupuncture could be a possible new treatment option for dental anxiety.

Only limited researchers have been done so far to see acupuncture’s effect on anxiety. Out of 120 trials across countries, only six trails were eligible for review in this study, with two showing high-quality methods.

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Previous studies have demonstrated that acupuncture at the Taixi (KI3) acupoint in healthy youths can activate neurons in cognitive-related cerebral cortex.

"There is increasing scientific interest in the effectiveness of acupuncture either as a standalone treatment or as an accompanying treatment to more traditional medications,” said Hugh Mac Pherson, Professor of Acupuncture at the University of York.

"We have recently shown, for example, that acupuncture treatment can boost the effectiveness of standard medical care in chronic pain and depression” he added.

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Acupuncture is a family of procedures involving stimulation of anatomical locations on or in the skin by a variety of techniques.

When a comparison between acupuncture patients and non-acupuncture patients was made, eligible differences in dental anxiety scores were noted. Reduction in anxiety was noted in patients who received acupuncture.

To increase the robustness of the findings, large-scale controlled trails needs to carried out. No conclusions were drawn in between patients that received acupuncture as an intervention and those that received placebo treatments.

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A researcher at Gold Coast’s Bond University suggests that opting for a psychological acupuncture could help reduce food cravings and lose weight.

The lead author of the study has said that if acupuncture was integrated as a dental practice, more high-quality research needs to be done as the other studies have shown that it can have lasting effect.

Reference

Fraser Kirkwood Allan, EmilyPeckham, JianpingLiu, Kristina Charlotte Dietz,Tingting Zhang, Aline Arakaki, Hugh MacPhersona. Acupuncture for anxiety in dental patients: Systematic review and meta-analysis, European Journal of Integrative Medicinel (2018).https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2018.03.008

Source-Medindia