Acupuncture and Back Pain

Data show Americans increasingly using acupuncture for some conditions.
Lesley Alderman wrote in the New York Times (5/8, B5) Patient Money column that "a growing number of people are turning to acupuncture for help with conditions including infertility, chronic pain, depression, and menopause symptoms. And they are turning to it even though financially it remains a largely out-of-pocket form of health care." In fact, "in a 2007 survey, 3.1 million adults reported using acupuncture in the previous 12 months, up from 2.1 million in a 2002 survey, according to the government's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a unit of the National Institutes of Health." Although the center "is mainly neutral on the question of acupuncture's effectiveness," some studies have shown that "acupuncture can be an effective treatment for a range of conditions, like chronic headaches, osteoarthritis, depression in pregnancy, and low back pain."