Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Reviews do not support acupuncture as a treatment for attention difficulties. Some studies of acupuncture alongside counselling have done better than dummy needling alongside counselling, which is a more modest claim than it first sounds.
The likeliest reading is that a warm, unhurried practitioner who examines you carefully is doing much of the work. Needles are very fine and harm is low, and plenty of insurers now cover it. So if it helps you, keep it, and keep it in proportion: alongside the treatment with evidence behind it, not instead of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
The Messenger is described as one who 'is deeply concerned for you and full of kindness and mercy' (Quran 9:128). Careful attention from another person has always been understood to do something, whatever else is going on.
لَقَدۡ جَآءَكُمۡ رَسُولࣱ مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ عَزِيزٌ عَلَيۡهِ مَا عَنِتُّمۡ حَرِيصٌ عَلَيۡكُم بِٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ رَءُوفࣱ رَّحِيمࣱ
A Messenger has come to you from among yourselves. Your suffering distresses him: he is deeply concerned for you and full of kindness and mercy towards the believers
Qur’an 9:128read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A Cochrane review of ways to improve sleep in people with chronic kidney disease, which included acupressure among the approaches examined, found the evidence too sparse and too low in certainty to reach conclusions. That is a familiar verdict in this area. It was about sleep in kidney disease rather than attention, and the state of the evidence is much the same.
Natale P, Ruospo M, Saglimbene VM, Palmer SC, Strippoli GF. (2019). Interventions for improving sleep quality in people with chronic kidney disease.. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Time, attention and expectation can produce real relief regardless of where the needles go.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Aching shoulders and a bad back are not separate from finding it hard to concentrate. Pain takes up room in your head, and there is less left for anything else.
End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.
Body based approaches have been linked with better physical and mental health, easier relationships, and in some settings lower use of painkillers and psychiatric medication.