ACUPUNCTURE FOR KIDS

Acupuncture is particularly noted by researchers as age-appropriate, mainly because it has so few side effects, a big consideration if a child is sensitive to certain medicines.

The use of acupuncture treatments in children is growing, paralleling the trend among adults, and not just for pain relief. Acupuncture has been used to treat children for anxiety, fatigue, sleep problems, reflux, nausea, stomach pain, headaches, ADHD, bone and joint pain, bedwetting, drooling asthma and allergies.

United States government figures estimate more than 150,000 children in the United States utilized acupuncture treatment in the last year.

SEVERAL STUDIES BACK IT

Researchers at Canada’s University of Alberta did a combined data probe on acupuncture with children, looking at 37 international studies.  Out of the more than 1,400 children in the analysis, about 168 had mild side effects from treatments. Serious problems were rare and were mostly confined to clinics in countries where strict safety standards were not observed.

A study published in the medical journal Pediatrics echoed those results. The first large-scale review on the safety of acupuncture in pediatric patients, the Pediatrics study claimed that about one in 10 children had bruising, pain or numbness at the site of needle penetration during acupuncture. Infections and nerve impairment were called rare by the study. The results mirrored similar studies done in adults, which found such complications in about five of every one million treatment sessions.