She comes unbidden and stays long: the stiff shoulder or Frozen Shoulder. Those who want to get rid of them faster should try acupuncture.
It starts for no apparent reason: You put on the coat or bring something up from the shelf – and suddenly shoot pain in the shoulder. Almost every everyday movement becomes agony, the shoulder becomes stiff and feels like frozen. Diagnosis: Adhesive capsulitis, better known as Frozen Shoulder, which describes pretty well how to perceive such a frozen shoulder .
The success of many treatments is usually limited – it takes years for the arm to move normally again
Women over 40 are particularly likely to be affected, as other risk factors include diabetes or lack of exercise. The fact that the symptoms spontaneously improve spontaneously and the frozen shoulder thaws again, is only a small consolation, because in most cases, it takes at least a year, sometimes even three years, until the arm is back to normal mobility.
In the meantime, physiotherapy can help; Even painkillers such as ibuprofen or ASA (in severe cases also stronger ones) are used to be able to move the arm further in everyday life and to prevent further stiffening. Some doctors also inject pain relieving or anti-inflammatory agents directly into the joint to make the symptoms more bearable. If nothing helps, in rare cases, “solving” surgical procedures are performed against the Frozen Shoulder. However, the success of this method is often very limited.
A new study at UKE in Hamburg shows that acupuncture reduces pain noticeably and immediately
Hope for a faster and more effective solution is now a new study of the University of Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) – and with acupuncture . Patients receiving conventional treatment at the clinic also received acupuncture treatment at the Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine, also based at the UKE .
First, this was done with special, very short needles, which were stuck with small patches on the skin. Because the researchers wanted to find out whether the needles could actually make a difference or whether only a placebo effect would occur. Therefore, half of the patients got patch with needles glued on, the other half plaster without needles. Neither patients nor attending physicians could tell the difference. In fact, the real acupuncture reduced the pain noticeably and immediately. In a second phase, patients wishing to do so received ten times weekly treatment with classical acupuncture needles for 20 minutes each.
Acupuncture has decisive advantages over physiotherapy and analgesics
After one year, the acupuncture group’s symptoms were compared with those of a control group that had received only physiotherapy and painkillers. The result was clear: both groups were about the same age after one year – which is not surprising, since many patients within this period anyway self-healing begins. But the acupuncture had a decisive advantage: The pain was demonstrably twice as fast and significantly after, on average after 15 weeks. Only hook of treatment: acupuncture is not a usual cash benefit, a possible reimbursement must be clarified for the Frozen Shoulder in advance. More information: www.tcm-am-uke.de