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Acupuncture therapy can treat colic in babies successfully
When babies suffer from colic, it can be very difficult for parents to calm them down. Often sufferers are at a loss and then seek help from experts. Researchers have now found that acupuncture seems to help treat babies with colic.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden found that acupuncture treatment could help reduce colic in babies. The physicians published the results of their study in the journal "Acupuncture in Medicine".
When babies suffer from colic, they often cry and cry for hours. This leads to a high burden for the child and parents. Physicians have now found that mild treatment with acupuncture may improve colic. (Image: WavebreakMediaMicro / fotolia.com) What are colic??
Colic is a normal phase in newborns. They are often referred to as three-month colic, because they usually begin at the age of two to four weeks and end at the age of three or four months. Affected babies scream and cry often for several hours a day. In some rare cases, however, it is also possible that the existing colic persists until the sixth or ninth month.
Acupuncture reduces colic in babies
The Swedish researchers found out that babies with colic spend less time crying and crying when treated with acupuncture for two weeks compared to babies without acupuncture.
Nutritional supplementation with Lactobacillus reuteri may help with colic
When parents have a baby with colic, they are looking for a safe way of treatment. So far, however, there is hardly any effective help for the affected babies. However, parents can also try supplementing with Lactobacillus reuteri to reduce the burden of colic, explained Dr. Kajsa Landgren from Lund University.
Ten to twenty percent of babies suffer from colic
If your baby cries more than three hours a day, parents should consider giving up cow's milk to feed their offspring, researchers said. If this change in diet is unsuccessful and the affected children continue to suffer from colic, minimal acupuncture may be a safe and effective treatment, the researchers add. Colic is relatively common among babies and about ten to twenty percent of all families have a baby, which consequently cries for days overly.
157 babies participated in the study
For the current study, researchers from Sweden recruited 426 healthy infants aged two to eight weeks. Overall, only 157 of the babies were included in the study. Many of the other children had no real colic and some of the parents did not want to participate in the study, the authors explain.
Babies were divided into three different treatment groups
The babies were randomly assigned to one of three different treatment groups. These included either two different applications of acupuncture or the usual normal care. The children used less needles in acupuncture. The stimulation by the needles is mild and short compared to the treatment of adult humans. Landgren. In other studies, so-called laser acupuncture and acupressure were used to treat the colic of babies.
Acupuncture is more effective in colic than normal care
In total, 147 babies completed the two-week study. When the babies received treatment with acupuncture, the constant crying and crying improved, compared to the babies with ordinary care, say the doctors. For example, if babies were always treated with acupuncture, they would spend about 40 percent less time crying. For babies with normal care, the figure was only 20 percent.
Improvement occurs after about one to two weeks
When infants received treatment with acupuncture, the criteria for colic were reduced after one or two weeks. In total, the children received a total of 388 acupuncture sessions during the study. During 188 of these sessions, the babies were crying, say the researchers.
Acupuncture must be performed by an expert
If children actually cry more than three hours a day every day, eliminating cow's milk protein in their daily diet, or supplementing with Lactobacillus reuteri does not bring about any improvement, expert acupuncture may help, Landgren stresses. However, the study had too few participants to determine if an acupuncture technique is more successful than the other treatments. (As)