Acupuncture for babies: a potential colic cure?

Acupuncture for babies: a potential colic cure?


Colic may be one of the most trying challenges parents of an infant can face. The incessant crying and screaming, the agony of seeing your child in pain, the frustration of not being able to make them feel better.

Acupuncture has long been used to reduce stress and pain and to improve gastrointestinal function in adults, but little is known about its effectiveness with children. Scientists at a university in Sweden say colicky babies who underwent regular acupuncture therapy were less likely than babies in a control group to exhibit symptoms of colic after two weeks of twice-weekly therapy.

The acupuncture babies were more likely to drop their crying below the threshold for colic, which is at least three days a week of crying for at least three hours a day. By the end of the two weeks of therapy, only 38 percent of acupuncture babies still did that much crying, while 65 percent of the control group babies did.

You may be wondering how the babies fared during the actual sessions. After all, sticking a young child with needles seems like it would cause more crying, not less. The researchers report there was very little crying during therapy. A baby cried for more than one minute in only 31 out of 388 sessions, and there was no crying at all during 200 sessions. Bleeding was almost nonexistent, with the scientists reporting a drop of blood was evident in only 15 cases.

As an anti-colic therapy, acupuncture seems promising, the researchers concluded. For desperate parents, this Eastern medicine technique might be the key to quieter days, and perhaps even the holy grail: a good night’s sleep.

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