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About acupuncture Acupuncture is but one part of a comprehensive system of traditional Asian medicine which also includes herbal medicine, bodywork, dietary therapy, and exercise. Acupuncture has a history of use going back over 3000 years in Chinese culture, and today in China exists side by side with modern Western medicine in a fully integrated health care delivery system. Acupuncture is one of the oldest and most widely practiced medical procedures in the world. It is gentle, safe, and effective for a wide range of conditions. Thirteen Commonly and Effectively Treated Conditions In January 2000 the Maryland Acupuncture Society published 'The Patient Satisfaction Survey - Final Report' - the result of a patient survey they contracted in 1999. The Final Report lists the 13 most common conditions for which patients sought treatment from an acupuncturist. Over 80% of the respondents also found these treatments to be very effective or moderately effective.
How does acupuncture work? Acupuncture is based on the concept of bringing balance to the "energy" that flows through the body. This is done by the insertion of very fine, almost hairlike needles into specific points on the body. This energy is called "Qi" (pronounced chee) in Chinese. There is no direct English translation for this term. It is rich with connotations that are rooted in a culture entirely unlike our own. That's why we leave it in its native language. The tendency when we hear about energy flowing through the body is to think in terms of electrical current or the nervous sytem only. The implications of the term "Qi" are broader than this and acupuncture works on more than just the level of the nervous system. You can read more about some of the ideas and early research about how acupuncture works here. Our bodies inately are self regulating. When, for whatever reason we are unable to self-regulate, a state of discomfort or disease will emerge. Acupuncture works essentially by giving the body subtle nudges back towards balance, so that our we are better able to heal on our own. Acupuncture in the United States Though still relatively new in the U.S., acupuncture and other forms of traditional Oriental medicine are gaining popularity as a treatment choice. For most Americans, their first glimpse of Chinese medicine and its potential uses was in 1971 when James Reston published a report in the New York Times introducing how Chinese physicians in Beijing eased his post surgical pain with needles. Prior to this Chinese medicine was practiced mostly among Chinese and very few Americans had even heard about it. Since then Chinese medicine has caused great interest in the United States. The first licenses to practice acupuncture were issued by the states of Oregon and Nevada in 1973, and the first acupuncture school in the country - the New England School of Acupuncture - was established in 1979. There are now over 50 acupuncture schools in the US, and over 20,000 acupuncturists. In 1992, the National Institutes of Health established an Office of Alternative Medicine, which led subsequently to Congress establishing the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 1998, and in 1993 the first survey of the prevalence of Complementary Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the US was published, showing that one third of Americans were CAM users. A 1996 California State Acupuncture Committee study identified well over 100 conditions treated with acupuncture, and in November 1997 a Consensus Development Conference sponsored by the NIH and several other agencies concluded: "there is sufficient evidence...of acupuncture's value to expand its use into conventional medicine and to encourage further studies of its physiology and clinical value". To date the NCCAM has funded the establishment of 17 national research centers to explore the safety and efficacy of a wide range of CAM therapies for a host of conditions, and currently the NIH supports over 200 studies involving CAM therapies. According to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey--the largest and most comprehensive survey of complementary and alternative medicine use by American adults to date--an estimated 8.2 million U.S. adults had tried acupuncture, and an estimated 2.1 million U.S. adults had used acupuncture in the previous year alone. More and more hospitals and clinical centers in the U.S. now offer acupuncture services, such as Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard University, UCLA Hospital, University of Maryland and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
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