Acupuncture can relieve cancer pain

Acupuncture can help cancer patients who suffer from pain in the feet and calves caused by side effects of medications they are taking.

A small study found patients who had undergone acupuncture treatment reported a decrease in pain. In addition, pain in the nerve also seemed to improve, say researchers from Hamburg in Germany. This discovery has been published in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine.

The patients who were treated with various chemotherapy drugs are known to have a condition that chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is damage to nerves in the legs and feet and can cause difficulty walking.

Six people have undergone ten acupuncture sessions over three months. The results were compared with five other patients who did not acupuncture.

The researchers say thanks to these therapies, blood flow to the lower leg may have been pushed. But they wanted a larger trial to obtain more accurate results.