Acupuncture May Relieve Menstrual Cramps

Acupuncture may help relieve menstrual cramps, which affect up to half of all young women, a systematic literature review has found. In their analysis of 27 studies involving nearly 3,000 women, researchers from the Oriental Hospital at Kyung Hee University Medical Center in South Korea found that acupuncture may be more effective than drugs or herbal medicines. "There is convincing evidence on the effectiveness of using acupuncture to treat pain as it stimulates the production of endorphins and serotonin in the central nervous system," researchers wrote in a statement. "Compared with pharmacological treatment or herbal medicine, acupuncture was associated with a significant reduction in pain," according to the study which appeared in BJOG.