Poor sleep quality is common among Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, with potential causative factors including chemical changes in the brain that disrupt sleep-wake cycles; PD medications that negatively affect the ability to fall or stay asleep; and mental-health challenges from living with the disease itself.
A recent single-center randomized, double-blind clinical trial1 suggests acupuncture may benefit PD patients. Among nearly 80 patients with self-reported moderate or severe sleep problems, as indicated by Parkinson’s Disease Sleep Scale scores at baseline, patients who received real acupuncture (RA) showed significant improvement in PDSS scores compared to patients who received sham acupuncture (SA). Differences were noted at four and eight weeks post-treatment.
As noted by the study authors in their findings, which appear in JAMA Network Open, “Participants in the RA group experienced a significant 29.65-point improvement in PDSS scores 4 weeks posttreatment, which persisted to 8 weeks of follow-up. ... Patients in the SA group also had a significant 10.47-point improvement in PDSS scores at week 4, but this effect did not persist during follow-up.”
All patients in the study received acupunture or sham acupuncture (three times per week for four weeks, 30-minute sessions) at the same acupoint locations (including bilateral connections): Si Shenzhen, Shen Ting (GV 24), Yin Tang (GV 29), He Gu (LI 4), Tai Chong (LR 3), San Yin Jiao (SP 6), Shen Men (HT 7), Zu San Li (ST 36), Shen Mai (BL 62), and Zhao Hai (K I6).
Editor’s Note: As this study is published in an open-access journal, the full text is available free of charge at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2820371.
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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.
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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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