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German researchers have found that the traditional Chinese acupuncture is better than either drugs or exercise in handling back pain, one of the most common chronic conditions to affect millions the world over. Conventional treatments include exercise as well as painkiller medications.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), the researchers conducted a large study in order to test the effectiveness of acupuncture or needle therapy in back pain. Acupuncture is one of the oldest, most commonly used medical procedures in the world. It became popular in the U.S. after a "New York Times" reporter James Reston waxed eloquent about the procedure for his post-surgical pain.

in 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of acupuncture. According to the NIH Consensus Statement on Acupuncture, there have been many studies conducted to judge the effectiveness of acupuncture in various disease states. Now a large study finds that acupuncture may in fact beat conventional treatment procedures in easing low back pain. The study by researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, says that even sham or fake acupuncture provided relief from back pain.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is believed that there are 12 main meridians and 8 secondary meridians and that there are more than 2,000 acupuncture points on the human body that connect with them. However the mechanism through which acupuncture works is as yet unclear. It is thought that the needles in some way stimulate the body’s nervous and immune systems. Thus it might help regulate the pain-killing biochemicals such as endorphins.

According to the NCCAM, acupuncture "has shown promise in adult postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting and in postoperative dental pain." In conditions like addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, low-back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and asthma, acupuncture may prove to be a useful secondary treatment, the center says.

Involving 1,162 adults, the study was the largest to test the safety and efficacy of acupuncture in handling low back pain. The German Acupuncture Trials were conducted in 340 outpatient practices. All patients had been suffering from low back pain for at least eight years.

Lead author Dr. Michael Haake of the University of Regensburg, Bad Abbach added that there might be "a common underlying mechanism that may act on pain generation, transmission of pain signals or processing of pain signals by the central nervous system and that is stronger than the action mechanism of conventional therapy."