COLORADO SERENITY - April 2005 (Research Shows That Acupuncture Works)

Tracy Saraduke, RN, M.Ac. L.Ac.

3082 Evergreen Parkway, Suite 2

Evergreen, CO 80439

(303) 670-9181

www.acuwebpage.com

Some people don’t care how a medicine or a treatment works. Others do. Some people are accepting of it if there is a long history or precedent.

“This [acupuncture] sure works, but I don’t understand it. I guess I really don’t understand the chemistry of drugs in the body either; I’ve always accepted that if you take a pill maybe you’ll feel better. I’ve learned to also accept that acupuncture works, even if I don’t know why.”

With a cultural history that includes thousands of years of acupuncture, Asians implicitly accept the nature of it. Westerners are warming up to it. Researchers, doctors, & lawmakers continue to examine or conduct trials of many modalities (drugs, surgeries, etc.) that include acupuncture, all with the goal of improving care of patients. Even without the recent bad press of many popular medications, the data supporting acupuncture continues to grow.

Acupuncture isn’t just showing up in news items in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times. Medical organizations are conducting research, and medical journals are reporting on the notable benefits of acupuncture, or showing how it works. These include The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The Annals of Internal Medicine, Human Brain Mapping Journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, The Anatomical Record, The World Health Organization, and The National Institute of Health. With support from reputable medical journals and establishments, it is clear that people know it works and they want to know more.

What are they saying that acupuncture does or what it can help? No one is claiming acupuncture is a panacea. It is a set of protocols based on a different medical model. The experts are reporting on acupuncture’s specific effects or specific conditions that improved with acupuncture:

Corrects breach orientation pregnancies;

Reduces nausea and vomiting;

Osteoarthritis pain relief and improved function;

Increases fertility;

Reduces cortisol, increases IgA antibodies, releases serotonin;

Affects the visual cortex and auditory cortex of the brain;

Increases beta endorphins; and

The World Health Organization lists dozens of other known conditions acupuncture treats.

Want to dig deeper?

PubMed is a search service maintained by the National Library of Medicine that provides information from more than 4,500 biomedical journals. In the past 10 years, PubMed showed almost 2,800 articles on acupuncture. You can access it from the National Library of Medicine Web site (www.nlm.nih.gov). The research shows that acupuncture is a vital part of health care.