Acupuncture May Help Reduce Excessive Crying In Babies, Researchers Claim

Amy Taylor January 17, 2017

Excessive crying in babies is a concern affecting one in five families. Not only does it cause pain to the baby, it also brings serious stress to the parents. Good thing, families can try an alternative approach to helping parents address colic.

Such approach – acupuncture - is widely utilized for many other health concerns. It is associated with relieving pain, restoring gut function, and inducing calm. For the current research, the investigators wanted to see if it might also resolve excessive crying in colicky babies.

For the study, researchers compared two types of acupuncture with standard care alone in 147 babies whose colic was confirmed at statutory routine check-ups in four child health centres in Sweden.

All the babies in the study were between 2 and 8 weeks of age and were otherwise healthy. Furthermore, they all have been on a cow’s milk exclusion diet for at least 5 days in a bid to curb excess crying or fussing.

The babies were grouped into three, in which they will receive weekly visits to the child health centre. The first group received standard minimal acupuncture at one acupuncture point (L14) for 2-5 seconds without stimulation while the second group were given tailored acupuncture at a maximum of five acupuncture points for up to 30 seconds with mild stimulation. The third group didn’t receive acupuncture at all. The acupuncture sessions were administered by 10 clinicians, nine of whom were fully trained acupuncturists, who had been in practice for an average of 20 years.

After the two-week trial, the amount of excessive crying among the babies greatly reduced. However, the biggest drop was observed among the acupuncture groups. Even more, a significantly higher proportion of babies in the acupuncture groups no longer fulfilled the criteria for colic compared with those in the standard care group after two weeks of treatment.

"Fussing and crying are normal communications for a baby, therefore a reduction to normal levels (rather than silence) is the goal of treatment," the researchers say. But, “for those infants that continue to cry for more than 3 hours/day, acupuncture may be an effective treatment option."

The study was published in the journal Acupuncture.

Source of this article:

Effect of minimal acupuncture for infantile colic: a multicentre, three-armed, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (ACU-COL) Acupuncture in Medicine

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