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Acupuncture for insomnia
Sleeping well, waking rested
Acupuncture for insomnia can often be really helpful. People often report a really good night's sleep after their first acupuncture treatment, even when they thought their sleep was pretty good in the first place!
Insomnia can be really draining. Sleeping poorly can be a really frustrating experience, and of course it's usually followed by feeling tired and groggy the next day. Increasing exhaustion still doesn't result in a good night's sleep an enormous sleep deficit can build up. Acupuncture can help cut through this cycle and re-establish a sounder sleeping pattern.
Acupuncture doesn't use a 'one size fits all' approach. Jessica's diagnostic process looks in detail at whether you're having trouble getting off to sleep, suffering easily disturbed sleep, being woken by over-vivid dreaming, waking in the night, waking frequently to go to the loo, or waking early and not being able to go back to sleep, to reach a fully individualised diagnosis. All these different sleep patterns have different diagnoses in Chinese medicine and are treated differently. Information from many other areas of your health may also fit into a neat pattern and give a clear indication of the best way to treat in your particular case.
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Research |
A 2003 report by the World Health Organisation (WHO)(1) found that insomnia is one of the conditions "for which the therapeutic effect of acupuncture has been shown but for which further proof is needed."
Meanwhile a review(2) by the British Medical Journal described acupuncture as "very safe" when practiced by an appropriately-qualified practitioner.
The modern evidence base for acupuncture is incomplete, and this is true for a great many areas of conventional medicine too. The Clinical Evidence website of the British Medical Journal tells us that of the 2,500 conventional medical treatments their databases cover, 46% are of unknown effectiveness (as at October 2009)(3).
Jessica continues to witness the benefits of acupuncture for many people in her work, utilising the knowledge and practice of Chinese medicine built up over thousands of years. She's happy that more and more modern scientific research is being done into acupuncture, helping to bring it to a wider audience.
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Contact Jessica
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Other conditions
Acupuncture can help with a wide range of health problems, click below to find out more:
Detailed references
(1) http://www.acupuncture-schools.us/national-institute-health-nih-acupuncture.cfm, referring to World Health Organisation (2002). Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trial, see http://apps.who.int/bookorders/anglais/detart1.jsp?sesslan=1&codlan=1&codcol=93&codcch=196
(2) Rampes (2001). The safety of acupuncture. British Medical Journal 2001;323(7311):467 (1 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7311.467, see http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/323/7311/467
(3) From the 'About Us' area of the Clinical Evidence BMJ website, page titled 'How much do we know', http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/about/knowledge.jsp. Extract at Oct 2009: "So what can Clinical Evidence tell us about the state of our current knowledge? What proportion of commonly used treatments are supported by good evidence, what proportion should not be used or used only with caution, and how big are the gaps in our knowledge? Of around 2500 treatments covered 13% are rated as beneficial, 23% likely to be beneficial, 8% as trade off between benefits and harms, 6% unlikely to be beneficial, 4% likely to be ineffective or harmful, and 46%, the largest proportion, as unknown effectiveness"
© Jessica Kennedy 2005-09, all rights reserved