What Does Acupuncture Treat?
In China, acupuncture is used to treat a vast array of ailments. However, Western society commonly thinks of acupuncture as pain treatment. This greatly underestimates the capacity of this medicine
It's important to remember that acupuncture has been continuously used as a primary medical modality for over 2,500 years in the world's most populous civilization. As such, acupuncture has both broad and deep clinical experience.
Of course, Western society requires evidenced-based data supporting the efficacy of acupuncture. To that end, two non-advocate groups of researchers and scientists convened by public agencies (NIH and WHO) conducted exhaustive research on the clinical data available at the time of their study.
Here’s what they found:
- In 1997, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a consensus report that concluded "The data in support of acupuncture are as strong as those for many accepted Western Medical therapies. 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" (NIH 1997) .
- In 1996, The World Health Organization (WHO) also issued a report on the efficacy of acupuncture, based on review of an extensive database of clinical trials. The conditions listed below are defined by the WHO as “Diseases, symptoms, or conditions for which acupuncture has been proved, through controlled trials, to be an effective treatment. Conditions which are listed in the NIH Consensus Panel’s report are also included to the right.
1. Acupuncture. NIH Consensus Statement 1997 Nov 3-5; 15(5): 1-34. This report may be downloaded for free on-line >> here
Learn more about additional modalities, find out what a typical course of treatment is, or contact Peninsula Acupuncture with any questions you may have.
