Does caffeine consumption reduce the efficacy of acupuncture analgesia? What does the current research state? Fujita, et al. (2017),1 published an animal study that showed oral intake of caffeine interferes with the efficacy of acupuncture for pain. Caffeine is a potent adenosine receptor antagonist. This animal study found that once the caffeine was out of the system, the efficacy of acupuncture was fully restored by the next day. Animal studies are important to find how acupuncture works for pain, and what may increase or reduce its efficacy.
That said, Alexander Pope's dictum, "The proper study of mankind is man," is widely cited and known.2 There are many reasons why results from animal experiments often do not translate into human trials; among them, many animal experiments are poorly conducted, designed and analyzed.3-4
Cao et al., investigated the modulation effect of daily caffeine intake on acupuncture analgesia (pain relief).5 Their study, published in early 2021 in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia, found no association between caffeine intake measurements of daily caffeine use, duration of caffeine consumption, or their interaction and pre- /post-acupuncture pain threshold changes. This human study found that caffeine intake may not influence the efficacy of acupuncture analgesia (pain relief) after all.
In general, caffeine may interfere with the "relaxation" many patients expect from acupuncture. However, if they are in pain, have had caffeine, and only seek pain relief, acupuncture will still be worth their time. I often have acupuncture after I have had more than my share of caffeine.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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