Acupuncture -
what you need to know

In 2009 a USA baseball team, San Francisco Giants, hired a staff acupuncturist. In 2010 the Giants snapped a 56 year streak and won the World Series, they won again in 2012. Acupuncture to improve sports performance and limit injuries works!

Acupuncture can increase your chances of workplace success and offers many benefits to boost your productivity. Acupuncture may also reduce the physical and emotional impacts of an unhealthy or stressful work environment.

Research published in the Medical Journal of Australia has shown that acupuncture is as effective as conventional medicine in treating ankle sprain pain and lower back pain.

Interest in acupuncture has grown because of concerns over the use of opioid-based pain-relief drugs, which can have strong side effects and are extremely addictive. Many cancer centres in the United States therefore offer complementary therapies for pain relief. 

A new study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine appears to at least somewhat vindicate the acupuncture believers.

After re-analyzing data from 29 high-quality clinical trials dating back to the 1990s, researchers have concluded that the pain relief derived from acupuncture is partly real, in that it can't be ascribed entirely to the placebo effect.

There’s new hope for people who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, a feeling of numbness, tingling or pain in the hand because of a squeezed nerve at the wrist. It comes in the form of a non-invasive and drug-free method of pain relief: acupuncture, according to a new study published in the journal Brain.

A recent study found out that the combination of needle acupuncture and herbal formula among the most effective treatment for global IBS symptoms. The study was published on the British Medical Journal.

Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, increasing at twice the rate of research into conventional biomedicine. Over this period, there have been over 13,000 studies conducted in 60 countries, including hundreds of meta-analyses summarizing the results of thousands of human and animal studies. A wide-variety of clinical areas have been studied, including pain, cancer, pregnancy, stroke, mood disorders, sleep disorders and inflammation, to name a few.

Bell’s palsy is known as “Zhong Feng” in Chinese Medicine, which translates to “Wind Attack”. “Wind” is a type of pathogen that acts quickly. It could enter the body and attack different part of the body, in the case of Bell’s palsy, the face meridians are the mostly affected. This results in Qi and Blood energy stagnation which block the signal of controlling the muscles.

The use of acupuncture in reproductive endocrinology and infertility has gained increased popularity worldwide. Several clinical and animal experimental studies indicate that acupuncture is beneficial for ovulatory dysfunction in PCOS. Acupuncture has also been reported to potentially improve insulin sensitivity and to decrease testosterone in patients with PCOS.

When traditional medicine hasn’t helped ease your migraine pain, many migraine patients are eager to explore other methods of treatment. Acupuncture was developed in ancient China, and involves piercing specific areas of the body with a needle to alleviate pain. 

Comparing the results with the standard treatment group, the acupuncture group took 15% less medication, made 25% fewer visits to their GP and took 15% less sick leave.

Interest in acupuncture has grown because of concerns over the use of opioid-based pain-relief drugs, which can have strong side effects and are extremely addictive. Many cancer centres in the United States therefore offer complementary therapies for pain relief. 

Research conducted in the UK shows acupuncture to be a cost-effective way to treat pain with very little risk for the patient.

Most of the time when you hear that someone has received acupuncture, you have one thing in mind. However, the term “acupuncture” has sort of become a catch-all for many different types of treatments that are available to patients. Since acupuncture is an ancient treatment, there have been updates and iterations over the years. Now, many different forms of acupuncture are out there, with their own strengths at treating different conditions. It’s always good to be informed, so we’ve put together a list for you of the most common types of treatments that often fall under the “acupuncture” umbrella.