Headaches are a nuisance and one that people always try to get rid of the moment it happens. Most resort to the normal relief options of ibuprofen, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, to neurologists and prescribed medication to help alleviate the pain presented from such headache. Sometimes though, people prefer not to take medication or the medication just doesn’t seem to work for them. For reasons as such, people turn to complementary and alternative medicine to ease the pain, specifically acupuncture therapy. For reasons not quite fully understood, this therapy helps to treat headaches in positive outcomes for the majority of people. Acupuncture therapy is an alternative to the normal standard form of treatment that can virtually have no side effects, is much less invasive, and has no need drugs that need to be metabolized by the body.

Acupuncture: What You Need To Know. (2014, November 1). https://nccih.nih.gov/health/acupuncture/introduction#hed3
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, acupuncture is defined as a “technique in which practitioners stimulate specific points on the body—most often by inserting thin needles through the skin.”
This Internet source article reviews what acupuncture is and what it can be used for in alternative medicine. For headache treatments, acupuncture may help relieve the pain from headaches and the amount of headaches one gets. In 2009, some studies were reviewed showing that acupuncture compared to drugs helped people with tension-type headaches. Also in 2012, studies were conducted to show the effectiveness of acupuncture on migraine and tension headaches, which in fact reduced the frequency and severity of the pain.

Cady, R. K., & Farmer, K. (2015). Acupuncture in the Treatment of Headache: A Traditional Explanation of an Ancient Art. Headache: The Journal Of Head & Face Pain, 55(3), 457-464. doi:10.1111/head.12523
This article describes acupuncture in its course of existence, from over 4,000 years as well as describing how acupuncture is performed for therapeutic treatments of headaches. There are certain elements of acupuncture that are clarified, such as the terms yang and yin and other metaphors that enable the acupuncturist to better understand the patient and symptoms presented to incorporate all the healing benefits of this type of healing. Three case studies are reviewed in this article of the different types of alternative acupuncture medicine, allopathic, traditional, and western acupuncture. These cases are reviewed and analyzed for the benefits and side effects that can occur as well as the safety and challenges.

Chong-hao, Z., Stillman, M. J., & Rozen, T. D. (2005). Traditional and Evidence- Based Acupuncture in Headache Management: Theory, Mechanism, and Practice. Headache: The Journal Of Head & Face Pain, 45(6), 716-730. doi:10.1111/j.1526-4610.2005.05139.x
This article reviews the history of acupuncture in headache management through evidence-based articles in the effectiveness of relieving headache and the safety issues from acupuncture. A main point that is brought to light is that despite the lack of consistency of scientific studies of the efficacy of acupuncture, the National Institutes of Health Consensus Developmental Panel reported since 1997 that “acupuncture may be useful as an adjunct treatment or an acceptable alternative or be included in a comprehensive management program.” Many studies have been conducted and reviewed but some may not necessarily meet the standards in order to be valid and reliable. The obstacles presenting in results being true are the poor study design in itself.

Cockerham, W. (2012). Healing Options. In Medical sociology (12th ed., pp. 220- 222). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
This information is obtained from a book of medical sociology on the chapter dealing with alternative healing options. It defines acupuncture as “an ancient Chinese technique of inserting fine needles in to specific points in the body to ease pain and stimulate bodily functions.” Not much is known is this and other complementary and alternative therapies work, but acupuncture does appear to be effective and even show the capability and possibility to be mainstream medicine. While this could be true, the evidence supporting this is due to personal testimonials that influence these findings. Whatever the reasons, there has been a general acceptance of these therapies for chronic pain conditions, as for headaches.
Coeytaux, R. R., Kaufman, J. S., Kaptchuk, T. J., Wunian, C., Miller, W. C., Callahan, L. F., & Mann, J. D. (2005). A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Acupuncture for Chronic Daily Headache. Headache: The Journal Of Head & Face Pain, 45(9), 1113-1123. doi:10.1111/j.1526-4610.2005.00235.x
The information provided in this article is quite reliable from the numbers the study provides. It sought to assess the efficacy of acupuncture for chronic daily headaches to normal neurological treatment. The outcomes were measured in the severity of the pain and the quality of life per headache. The patients who only had normal treatment did not show improvement, while those who received acupuncture with normal treatment did show an improvement. In fact, those who receieved acupuncture were 3.7 times more likely to suffer less from headaches than from before. The confidence interval was appropriate for the number of absolute risk, making the numbers valid for this study and applicable to its sample size study. From this study, the information analyzed can be crucial for future headache treatment that includes supplementing acupuncture with normal headache therapy and medical management compared to just normal or just acupuncture.

Gilmour, J., Harrison, C., Asadi, L., Cohen, M. H., & Vohra, S. (2011). Referrals and Shared or Collaborative Care: Managing Relationships With Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners. Pediatrics, 128S181- S186.doi:10.1542/peds.2010-2720G
This article discusses the steps a physician should take when deciding complementary and alternative medicine and therapy as the treatment plan for a patient. It looks at the case study of an adolescent patient who presents with chronic headaches, where normal medication did not relieved the pain. For the steps that are needed to be appropriate for this type of medicine a referral must be present, mainly for insurance purposes since most insurance may not cover alternative practices. Also the relationship the physician and the acupuncture therapist have, and the considerations this type of health care maintains that need to be considered. The government has begun to recognize these practices and encourage primary physicians to essentially do the same. While this article presents the “behind scenes” needed in order to properly do alternative medicine, some physicians are still hesitant to alternative medicine.

Hopton, A., & MacPherson, H. (2010). Acupuncture for Chronic Pain: Is Acupuncture More than an Effective Placebo? A Systematic Review of Pooled Data from Meta-analyses. Pain Practice, 10(2), 94-102. doi:10.1111/j.1533-2500.2009.00337.x
In this article, Hopton and MacPherson research the controversy of the effectiveness of acupuncture to a placebo for treating chronic conditions. They reviewed the acupuncture used on chronic pain of headaches and other chronic pain conditions in short-term and long-term success. For the short-term outcomes, acupuncture showed significant improvement and long-term outcome showed acupuncture effective in tension-type headaches. From these results and the other evidence that the authors reviewed, they suggested that acupuncture does work more than just a placebo for chronic pain management of headaches and other conditions. They reviewed both side of the acupuncture controversy in order to get to their conclusion In their final remarks, the authors pose a question that leaves much to think about: “if this conclusion is correct, then we ask the question: is it now time to shift research priorities away from asking placebo-related questions and shift toward asking more practical questions about whether the overall benefit is clinically meaningful and cost-effective?”

Jedel, E., & Carlsson, J. (2005). Acupuncture in the management of tension-type headache. Physical Therapy Reviews, 10(3), 131-139. doi:10.1179/108331905X55802
The purpose of this article is to review the efficiency of acupuncture for tension-type headache relief and to compare it to the criteria that assess the studies. Articles were evaluated through various databases. The inclusion criteria assessed that six articles could be used for supporting evidence, of which, two were of high quality. However, the results provided limited evidence in actually using acupuncture for tension-type headaches. This type of review system that this article set up to use to review the efficacy of acupuncture, is key in focusing at the validity and consistency of the studies previously conducted, giving the same results in the end as other studies had done so before.

Plank, S., Goodard, J., Pasierb, L., Simunich, T., & Croner, J. (2013). Standardized Set-point Acupuncture for Migraines. Alternative Therapies In Health & Medicine, 19(6), 32-37.
This article reviews a study that was conducted to evaluate the therapy of acupuncture over time to see if there could be a decrease in the frequency and intensity of migraines. Intervention therapy was the goal of this study, so acupuncture was delivered multiple times a week and slowly decreased to once a week for continued improvement. Daily headache and migraine quality of life measurements were collected for twelve weeks before, during and twelve weeks after the study. The pre-intervention and post-intervention measurements were compared and the amount of and intensity of migraines had significantly decreased as well as the benefits of the acupuncture lasting for twelve weeks and more after the final session, showing improvement over the baseline period of study and beyond.

Sun-Edelstein, C., & Mauskop, A. (2011). Alternative Headache Treatments: Nutraceuticals, Behavioral and Physical Treatments. Headache: The Journal Of Head & Face Pain, 51(3), 469-483. doi:10.1111/j.1526-4610.2011.01846.x
In this article, all the various components of complementary and alternative medicine are discussed from the evidence compiled from the authors. The author, Sun-Edelstein, states that in a “recent questionnaire based survey conducted in Germany and Austria, the majority (81.7%) of patients attending tertiary outpatient headache clinics reported use of complementary and alternative medicine, CAM. CAM usage is often motivated by dissatisfaction with conventional therapies and medication side effects, or a desire to be proactive against a disabling disorder.” Acupuncture is considered a physical type of therapy that is prescribed to relieve the pain associated with headaches for it aims to restore the equilibrium to the body. There are currently 2.13 million people in the United States that receive acupuncture while 10 percent of the visits are for headache relief. There are some limitations with all the case series and studies that were studied. The U.S. Headache Consortium found that there was not enough evidence to fully recommend the use of acupuncture and other treatments for headaches.

Witt, C. M., Reinhold, T., Jena, S., Brinkhaus, B., & Willich, S. N. (2008). Cost- effectiveness of acupuncture treatment in patients with headache. Cephalalgia (Wiley-Blackwell), 28(4), 334-345. doi:10.1111/j.1468- 2982.2007.01504.x
Witt and her associates studied the cost and the overall cost-effectiveness of patients receiving acupuncture treatment for headaches compared to patients receiving a “normal” treatment plan for headaches in Germany. The quality of life, direct and indirect costs of the therapy, and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was evaluated during the three-month period studied. Acupuncture is used widely as an alternative for the treatment of tension type headache, however the effectiveness of the therapy itself still receives controversy. It was found that the group receiving acupuncture had higher costs than the traditional routine care mainly because of the price of acupuncture therapy session and the fact that insurance doesn’t always cover it. In Germany, the physician administers acupuncture and can be considered in routine care; therefore the authors concluded from this study and research done in Germany “according to international cost-effectiveness threshold values, acupuncture is a cost-effective treatment in patients with primary headache.”