Tuina combination therapies beat oral medication for insomnia in this exploratory review

People with insomnia often rely on pills to sleep. But what if gentle touch and breathing exercises worked better? A new review looked at Tuina-based combination therapies against oral medication for patients with confirmed insomnia. The group included 2,663 subjects. Researchers compared these therapies to standard oral medication. They measured how well treatments worked and how sleep quality improved. The results showed that Tuina combined with breath guiding, music, foot baths, or acupoint application performed significantly better than taking pills alone. This held true for both the total effective rate and sleep quality scores. Even Tuina with acupuncture or scraping showed improvement over medication. Safety data suggested Tuina with acupoint application had the lowest rate of side events among the options tested. However, the review noted that most evidence quality was low or very low. The network of studies was sparse, which limits definitive safety conclusions. These findings are exploratory and need verification through higher-quality trials. Until then, the potential advantage of these therapies over drug monotherapy remains a promising area for further study.