Modern medicine has rigorous standards when it comes to implementing any given treatment for any given disease. Many people are curious to know whether acupuncture is an effective method of expediting or enhancing stroke recovery after acute stroke. It appears after several studies and a full Cochrane review that the evidence is simply not sufficient to support a beneficial role for acupuncture in acute stroke. The main reason for this is that the studies performed are of poor quality or too small to allow the experts to derive any meaningful conclusions. Therefore more studies will need to be performed in the future to prove or disprove a beneficial (or harmful) effect of acupuncture in recovery from stroke.
Having said this, it probably is OK to give acupuncture or other alternative forms of medicine a try, but do it safely by discussing it with your doctor before you do. More importantly, you should reserve trials of these unverified, yet expensive treatment options, after all conventional and proven therapies have already been tried without success.
Recommended reading:
Rehabilitation for Stroke Recovery
Aphasia Rehabilitation
Sexual Life After Stroke
My Dad just had a stroke two months ago, and he is recieving acupuncture. I spoke with two different acupuncturists and both said that there was a window of opportunity after the stroke for the acupuncture to work–I realize that most recovery does take place in the beginning, however, after my father’s first acupuncture treatment he is noticibly more steady on his feet and seems to be more mentally clear….and the acupuncturist thought that we wouldn’t see any results at all for six weeks. Also, she is HOPEFUL about treating him. (he is 80) Traditional Rehab at kaiser wants to dismiss him. I think that if you suffer a stroke you should do whatever you can to make yourself better, and not wait until all your other options are exhausted. Probably acupuncture is worth it for the endorphins released, if for nothing else. His mood is certainly elevated! And, seeing him in a good mood after two months of being very grumpy is worth the cost of the acupuncture.
Janne. Thank you for comment. I am very pleased to hear that your dad is responding well to the acupuncture therapy. And after being “dismissed” by a conventional rehabilitation institution, I too would be seeking viable alternatives.
I thing that what you are doing makes perfect sense. And there might be something to acupuncture therapy. What this blog emphasizes is that its efficacy has yet to be proven.
“The failure to prove the existence of something does not mean that that something does not exist.”
I was a bit dismayed by the title of your article. In China stroke wards consistently use acupuncture with great results. I agree that studies are limited in quality and quantity but that is mainly because acupuncture does not fit well into the standard study designs. There are a plethora of challenges for acupuncture researches to overcome for studies to reflect its true nature. Proper research into it is highly complex. I do understand scientists reservation with current studies. This is aggravating for acupuncturists. The field of Western research is new for acupuncturists and still evolving. Proper placebo techniques are only just coming out and their effectiveness being tested. So until the researchers get on their feet, please keep an open mind about acupuncture. Knocking it could prevent someone from getting some very effective care.
The title of your article is very misleading. Acupuncture is used in Asian cultures to help with stroke recovery and they have tremendous success. A patient needs to start acupuncture treatments within two weeks after the onset of the stroke. Studies are performed in Asian cultures with great success credited to acupuncture, and just because they are not funded and performed in the United States is no reason to dismiss them. How can you name the title of your article: “Acupuncture not effective in stroke” when the studies you mentioned are too poor to even point that acupuncture does not work effectively? Your title is misleading and may keep someone from not getting the help that I know acupuncture can give. If you are going to write articles for this website you need to be more careful with the wordage you use.
Heather. Thank you for your comment. I have reworded the title of this blog as I believe the previous one was not completely clear, as you pointed out.
However, I would like to clarify that for a study to be effective at proving or disproving a therapy it must be published in the global medical literature, whether or not it is performed or funded in the US.
If you take a look at pubmed, our global medical literature database, you will find articles performed and funded by agencies from all over the globe. And in fact the Chinese and others have published multiple articles on this subject and the conclusion has not been the one you are suggesting, namely that they are “very successful”. There is not enough data yet for anyone to say that with certainty.
Can you please point us to some reliable studies not reviewed by the authors of the Cochrane review mentioned in the blog, which support your statements?
Thanks!
Stroke, thanks for your post about acupuncture and stroke. It was nice from you to raise this topic, since stroke is a very common disease and acupuncture is each day more accepted in occident. However, I have to agree with Heather that your title is inappropriate as well as your conclusion. I do science and I have several articles at Pubmed with high impact factor and I have some knowledge concerning to acupuncture too. As scientist I can tell you that the science is far away from being able to tell us what is not true. It can be used to tell us how much we can trust in such treatment or drug, but never to tell us that a traditional medicine is wrong or useless just because it does not fit our occidental science, which we all know is full of errors and contradictions. What a sick person has to believe is the number of people healed. The occidental medicine is also completely ineffective in several diseases, but they still keep the treatment on. By the way, one question that comes to my mind now is… who should be improved to give us more accurate outcomes regarding to the effectiveness of acupuncture, the own acupuncture or the occidental science? How many publications in “Nature” or “Science” journals have already been proved to be wrong years later for someone else?
What I know that is true is that the considered “alternative” treatments, like acupuncture as well as Yoga, if not as effective as conventional ones they – at least – give us less side effects and that should be mentioned for all critic people in their articles, because everyone knows that. However, I also would like to let it clear that unfortunately there are several people not well prepared to execute in the right way this secular medical treatment.
Thank you for your comment Dario
I want you to know that I support the use of acupuncture as a complement to other conventional methods of rehabilitation for stroke and other diseases.
But my support for it does not change the fact that the data to support its efficacy are weak and inconclusive. The blog addresses the importance of proving the efficacy of any given intervention through well designed clinical trials.
This applies to everything we do in modern medicine. And the standards are the same for the orient, occident, north and south.
I am sure that some publications in Science and Nature have been proven wrong in retrospect, but this is in no way relevant to the subject matter discussed in this blog.