Research Collaboration with Health Partners Neuroscience
A lot of people with concussion or brain injury don’t think to go to get acupuncture to help support their recovery and healing. In the mainstream, doctors and our medical community don’t typically know enough about what acupuncture is doing in the body to be able to recommend it to their patients in their recoveries, even if there is a plethora of research out there. We sat down with physicians and researchers who work with traumatic brain injury patients at the Health Partners Neuroscience Center, and asked them about some of the most common and stubborn challenges their patients face after a concussion. They shared unanimously that one of the most stubborn and difficult to treat conditions after a concussion for them is Chronic Post Traumatic Headache. We said “ acupuncture can help with that”.
Together, we set out to test whether or not it could actually help with this stubborn, often debilitating, condition. We combined our expertise with theirs and formed a clinical pilot study to test outcomes for patients suffering from chronic post-traumatic headache. We used what we know about the neuroscience of post traumatic headache and combined it with specific, neurologic acupuncture applications that regulate the most commonly affected centers in post-traumatic headache syndrome, and came up with a research supported acupuncture protocol for chronic post traumatic headache. We then applied for grant funding from Minnesota Spinal Cord and Traumatic Brain Injury Research State Grant Program, and secured $80K to study it!
Our trial begins this winter! We are looking for patients with chronic post traumatic headache (post-traumatic headache for 3 months or more), who are not currently using acupuncture as an intervention. If you are looking for more information on the study, or would like to be screened to be a participant, please call (651) 495-6363 or email ClinicalTrials@HealthPartners.com to inquire for more information.
We are very excited to be moving in this direction, and exploring this collaboration further!
