Frozen Shoulder: This is how acupuncture helps with stiff shoulders
It starts for no apparent reason: you put on the coat or bring something up from the shelf? and suddenly, pain shoots in the shoulder. Almost every everyday movement becomes agony, the shoulder becomes stiff and feels like frozen. Diagnosis: adhesive capsulitis, better known as Frozen Shoulder, which describes pretty well how to perceive such a stiff shoulder.
The success of many treatments is usually limited. It takes years for the arm to move normally again
Women over 40 are particularly likely to be affected, as other risk factors include diabetes or lack of exercise. The fact that the symptoms spontaneously improve spontaneously and the frozen shoulder thaws again, is only a small consolation, because in most cases it takes at least a year, sometimes even three years, until the arm is back to normal mobility.
In the meantime, physiotherapy can help; Even painkillers such as ibuprofen or ASA (in severe cases also stronger ones) are used to be able to move the arm further in everyday life and to prevent further stiffening. Some doctors also inject pain relieving or anti-inflammatory agents directly into the joint, to make the complaints more bearable. If nothing helps, in rare cases, "solving" surgical procedures are performed against the Frozen Shoulder. However, the success of this method is often very limited.
A new study at UKE in Hamburg shows that acupuncture reduces pain noticeably and immediately
Hope for a faster and more effective solution is now a new study of the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)? with acupuncture. Patients receiving conventional treatment at the clinic were admitted to the Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is also located at the UKE. additionally an acupuncture treatment.
First, this was done with special, very short needles, which were stuck with small patches on the skin. Because the researchers wanted to find out whether the needles could actually make a difference or whether only a placebo effect would occur. Therefore, half of the patients got patch with needles glued on, the other half plaster without needles. Neither patients nor attending physicians could tell the difference. In fact, the real acupuncture reduced the pain noticeably and immediately. In a second phase, patients wishing to do so received ten times weekly treatment with classical acupuncture needles for 20 minutes each.
Acupuncture has decisive advantages over physiotherapy and analgesics
After one year, the acupuncture group's symptoms were compared with those of a control group that had received only physiotherapy and painkillers. The result was unequivocal: Both groups were about the same age after about a year? which is not surprising since many patients use self-healing anyway within this period of time. But acupuncture had a decisive advantage: The pain was proven to be twice as fast and noticeable, on average after 15 weeks. Only hook of treatment: acupuncture is not a usual cash benefit, a possible reimbursement must be clarified for the Frozen Shoulder in advance. More information: www.tcm-am-uke.de
