At any given moment, 20% of American population is experiencing some degree of lower back discomfort. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that 85% of the cases doctors have no idea what actually is causing the pain. In the absence of fail-safe medical or surgical solution to routine back pain, scores of alternative therapies have come to the fore.

In one of the biggest and most ambitious studies of its kind, published in 2009,  in the Archives of Internal Medicine, acupuncture was found to improve back pain more than standard care that relied on medication and physical therapy. The rationale of why acupuncture works is because the therapeutic intervention may stimulate the release of feel-good endorphin neurochemicals. Moreover, with needling, the practitioner finds knots and light taps a thin needle, causing the contracted muscle fibers to twitch rapidly. The communication between muscle fibers and nervous system delivers a therapeutic release of the knots.

In at typical acupuncture treatment, the practitioner insets thin needles into points on the invisible paths called meridians. Your life force, or Qi, flows along these path, the needles correct qi imbalances and can improve back pain by boosting endorphins.