Background: Sleep disorders erode quality of life and increase public medical expenditure. Aside from mainstream therapies, complementary and alternative medicines have been widely adopted, among which the use of acupuncture is rising.
Primary study objective: This narrative review analyses research outcomes, and then provides an overview of the effects of acupuncture on sleep problems caused by various factors.
Method: This research reviews 79 empirical projects with 6589 participants in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Germany, Iran, Brazil, Canada, and the United States, aged 15to 85 years, which are retrieved from 29 promising electronic databases in English and Chinese.
Results: The findings support the usefulness of this method to deal with sleep disturbances through different forms of acupuncture, including traditional, sham, shock wave, venom, and Mongolian modes, as well as acupressure, either applied standalone or coupled with other therapies.
Conclusion: This review sheds light on the modernisation of acupuncture to expand medical options for both health care professionals and patients with sleep difficulties. Despite this, improvements in research design are suggested to attain better credibility in order to substantiate the curative, remedial, rehabilitative, and preventive treatments of acupuncture to enhance sleep quality.