Acupuncture for tension headaches

The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is a special health authority of the NHS that sets guidelines on the use of medicines, treatments, procedures and clinical practice for doctors and other healthcare practitioners. In 2009 NICE recommended that acupuncture should be made available on the NHS as a cost-effective short-term management treatment for the management of early, non-specific lower back pain. Today, NICE further extended their endorsement of acupuncture by recommending that acupuncture should be prescribed to patients in the prophylactic treatment of chronic tension-type headache. The guidelines stipulate a course of 10 sessions over the course of 5-8 weeks.
Not insignificantly, NICE conclude that acupuncture is the only proven method to prevent tension-type headaches and migraine and that doctors should prescribe it.
In a month in which a meta-analysis of nearly 18,000 patients demonstrated acupuncture’s capacity to help those in chronic pain from arthritis, there are now many reasons to consider acupuncture as a treatment for a number of health conditions.

You can read details of the new NICE announcement on The British Acupuncture Council’s website here: http://www.acupuncture.org.uk/ or read the guidelines directly on the NICE website here http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/index.jsp?action=byID&o=13901