Acupuncture is a 5,000 year old Chinese system of natural healing (No drugs; No surgery), which is concerned with restoring proper energy flow to the various organs, glands and tissues of the body on the premise that most diseases are the result of malfunction due to disrupted energies.

Acupuncture is a process of inserting very thin needles into the skin at certain points on the body.  These needles are inserted at different depths for different effects.  It originated in China and has been used there for thousands of years to treat ailments.  What many people do not know is that acupuncture is a Latin word for an oriental treatment.  This is important because the word implies only using piercing needles and done alone.  The truth is that acupuncture was always performed along with nutritional advice and manipulation. (Something chiropractors are best trained to do).  This means that your treatment using acupuncture alone will not be as effective without the other two and your best bet for effective acupuncture is to see a chiropractor trained in all three.

In addition, electrical acupuncture has been shown to be as effective as needle acupuncture.  It can cause less stress to the patient as well as being quicker and easier to administer.

It wasn’t until the twentieth century that is spread from Europe to Canada and then to the United States.  Today it is used to treat many different things.  A current Acupuncture index by Ralph Alan Dale suggests treatments using acupuncture for more that 2,000 conditions.  Below are just a few!

  • Alleviating pain
  • Headaches and migraines
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Insomnia
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Sinuses
  • Irritable bowel syndrome
  • Menstrual pain/PMS
  • Smoking addiction
  • Infertility
  • Bladder infections
  • Stress

Acupuncture Techniques

A Brief History of Acupuncture

An exciting revolution is currently taking place in our ability to use electricity to speed recovery from injuries and relieve pain. This revolution is an extension of an ancient

tradition. Electricity has been used by healers since antiquity. Innovative Greek physicians used local application of live electric eels to produce pain relief.

We’ve certainly come a long way since electric eels. Innovative modern chiropractors are increasingly utilizing sophisticated electrotherapy in their practices. Taking advantage of recent technological advancements in electrotherapy can dramatically enhance chiropractic results.

The effectiveness of this minimal intensity electrical stimulation is quite remarkable, and represents a quantum leap forward over previously available forms of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (T.E.N.S.) and Electro-Galvanic Stimulation (E.G.S.), which use high intensity direct current milliamperage stimulation. This presynaptic feedback inhibition may also be enhanced by the secretion in the CNS of endorphins and enkephalins, the body’s naturally occurring narcotics.

M.E.N.S. gains Media Exposure through sport injury successes Minimal intensity micro-stimulation has added a whole new dimension to electrotherapy. Now, instead of simply masking pain, we may have a way to electrochemically fuel the body’s natural healing mechanism, often producing dramatic recoveries form painful injuries. Such treatments have gained national headlines when world-record runners such as Joan Benoit and Mary Decker used micro-stimulation to recover from injuries sustained before the 1984 Olympic Games.

Rapid resolution of painful swelling, inflammation and associated limitations of movement can be expected in most acute cases treated with micro-stimulation. Impressive results are also often obtained with chronic injuries, often to the amazement of all. A full 80 – 90 % of the patients treated with micro-stimulation can be expected to have excellent results.

Current research findings substantiate electrical acupuncture.
Skeptics sometimes ask for research documentation to support the many anecdotal reports regarding the efficacy of micro-stimulation. That piece of the puzzle was nicely supplied with the appearance of an article in the Aug./Sept. issue of the California Health Review. The article was entitled, “A Double-blind Comparative Study of Micro-Stimulation” by F.P. Meyer, MD, et al. This study was very revealing and provided a documentation regarding the viagra brand. Patients received 16 treatments within eight weeks, either actual micro-stimulation or placebo. After this series of treatments, the real treatment group achieved an average pain relief almost 40% greater than the placebo group.

The gains achieved by the real treatment group were maintained during the eight week follow-up period, with no further treatments required. The final results at the conclusion of the eight week follow-up period were most impressive indeed – an average pain relief in these chronic low back pain patients of 75% (3/4 of their original pain was gone!) versus only 6% pain relief in the placebo group. This study supports the contention that micro-stimulation produces electrochemical changes in the body that sets the stage for healing.

All of this said, electrical acupuncture is very effective in instigating your body to produce the chemicals that are necessary to promote healing. There are no side effects and the worst thing that could happen is nothing happens. Most of the time, however, healing is sped up and this delivery is a perfect compliment to chiropractic adjustments.

Acupuncture ‘works in mice’

 | Posted by Mark Peplow | Category: Biology & Biotechnology

Long derided by much of the mainstream medical community, acupuncture may have just got a little bit less alternative.

Despite thousands of years of anecdotal evidence claiming benefits in treating ailments from allergies to hiccups, acupuncture faces two big challenges to acceptance in mainstream medicine: most clinical trials have found no evidence of efficacy; and there is no scientifically accepted mechanism for how the treatment could work. Many researchers assume that any benefits are down to the placebo effect.

Now, research in mice has provided a biochemical explanation that some experts find more persuasive, although it might account for only some of the treatment’s supposed benefits. “Our study shows there is a clear biological mechanism behind acupuncture,” says Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester, New York, who led the research, published in Nature Neuroscience.

Nedergaard’s team were interested in finding out whether the neuromodulator adenosine, which is produced on tissue injury and has pain-dulling properties, was involved in the pain-relieving effects of acupuncture.

After inducing chronic pain in the right legs of their mice, the researchers inserted and rotated an acupuncture needle just below the ‘knee’, at a point known in humans as the ‘Zusanli point’. For about an hour after the treatment, the mice took longer to respond to touch or heat on the paw, ultram.

The scientists found that the needle had caused tissue damage; they also noted an increase in local levels of a number of biologically active molecules, including adenosine.

Mice lacking a key receptor for adenosine did not show the same response after acupuncture.

Edzard Ernst, who studies the effectiveness of alternative therapies at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, UK, says that the mechanism is credible. But the work does not address whether acupuncture is actually an effective treatment, he adds. “If the clinical effect is not beyond placebo, which most of the well controlled clinical trials seem to suggest, the mechanism is irrelevant and the true mechanism is placebo,” he says.

Posted on behalf of Dan Cressey

Q: What is accupuncture?

A: Accupuncture is a 5,000 year old Chinese system of natural healing (No drugs; No surgery), which is concerned with restoring proper energy flow to the various organs, glands and tissues of the body on the premise that most diseases are the result of malfunction due to disrupted energies.

Explanation: The Chinese definition of Health is “All parts of the body functioning normally,” all 400 trillion parts. If there is an interruption in the transmission of energy flow or life force (called chi in Chinese), then organ malfunction, disease, pain and suffering are inevitable.

Q: Where does the interruption of energy flow occur?

A: In either or both locations:

    1. In the channels of energy flow, which are located throughout the body, just beneath the skin surface
    2. In the spinal column where vertebrae may become misaligned, thereby compressing vital nerve trunks.

Q: Are there other causes of disease besides those associated with the interference of the transmission of energy flow?

A: Yes, of course. Psychosomatic states, hereditary factors, poisons, adverse environmental conditions, injury, germs, malnutrition, etc… are all disease producing.

Q: How do you detect the disturbance in energy flow within a patient?

A: By many methods, including certain signs, symptoms, pain sports, organ reflex points, and by pulse or instrumental findings.

Q: Assuming I’m going to take acupuncture treatments, how are they performed?

A: First, the related skin points are determined. Then they are appropriately treated by one of over thirty methods of stimulation, some of which are:

  • Long needle insertion (especially done in acupuncture anesthesia for surgery)
  • Short needle penetration
  • Non-piercing needles
  • Finger tip pressure (called shishin or “finger needles”)
  • Metallic balls taped to the points
  • Electrical stimulation
  • Moxabustion (the burning of herbs over the points)

Note: The non-piercing needle (teishin) is very popular because the technique is practically painless, there is no blood, no danger of infection, and results are equal to, if not better than other techniques.

Q: What are some of the conditions commonly treated by acupuncture?

A: Textbook listed conditions run into the hundreds. Typical ailments usually responding to acupuncture health care includes:

neuralgias, headaches, trigeminal neuralgia, tics, spasms, muscular rheumatism, neuralgia of the shoulders and arm, tennis elbow, osteoarthritis, rheumatism, ulcers, stomach problems, diarrhea, hepatitis, asthma, bronchitis, shortness of breath, coughs, certain types of heart trouble, abnormal blood pressure, hemorrhoids, lumbago, bladder irritation, bed wetting, certain kidney problems, female disorders, impotence, glaucoma (sometimes), weak eyesight, hay fever, loss of smell, tonsillitis, loss of hearing, skin conditions, and even nervous or psychiatric factors based on the fact that often mental problems arise from physical disorders.

The above list may seem long as though acupuncture were a Panacea. The truth is that most textbooks list over two hundred diseases. Please be mindful of the fact that acupuncture is not like one drug used for one condition; on the contrary, acupuncture is a complete healing art within itself, concerned with the systems of the body such as nervous, circulatory, digestive, respiratory, eliminatory, reproductive, hormonal, musculoskeletal, etc., and seeks to correct health problems within those systems.

Q: Out of every 10 patients accepted for acupuncture health care, how many usually respond favorable?

A: On the average, 8. Two out of ten fail to respond favorable for a variety of reasons. Advanced age, severity of the condition, irreversible tissue damage, etc., are deterrents to recovery.

Q: Are spinal adjusting treatments necessary with acupuncture?

A: Absolutely. Spinal adjusting is part of the acupuncture health care. World authorities, including Feliz Mann, M.D. of England; Paul Nogier, M.D. of France; and Kunzo Nagayama, M.D. of Japan are very emphatic on this aspect of “getting well”.

Q: Does acupuncture have another name?

A: Yes. In fact, the word accupuncture is incorrect because it implies needles only. The proper wording is “Meridian Therapy” or Ching Lo Chi Liao in Chinese. It was named “acupuncture” in the 16th century by Portuguese sailors who knew no better. The wrong name stuck.

Q: In America, what kind of doctor should one go for this type of health care?

A: Any doctor (chiropractor, medical, or osteopath) who has had the proper training.

Any doctor who has not had the proper training is pretending to know something he/she does not, and by that definition is a quack. Just because a doctor happens to have a chiropractic, medical, or osteopathic degree does not mean he/she is qualified to do accupuncture. If he/she engages in practice, he/she is guilty of accupuncture malpractice. He/she must receive qualified training and pass exams to certify competence. This protects the public.

Q: In Accupuncture (Meridian Therapy are there other significant factors besides skin point stimulation and vertebral adjusting?

A: Yes, there are four laws to obey for those who desire health and longevity:

  • Adequate rest
  • Proper nutrition
  • Moderate exercise
  • A positive mental attitude

Q: Has any research, other than empirical, been conducted on Acupuncture?

A: Meridian Therapy is natural healing based on knowledge of another biological principal new only to the western world. Soviet scientists Novinski and Vorobiev have proven the premise of ancient Chinese healing by localizing meridian points with a Wheatstone Bridge, using an zolpidem generic. This was fed by a generator of sonic frequency and recorded on a cathode ray oscilloscope. When the electrode touched an active accupuncture point the amplitude of the wave on the oscilloscope diminished. Best results were derived from frequencies of a few kilohertz and voltage from several millivolts to 4 colts.

Research? The Russians have already done it.

The research needed concerns results in this country on the sick American. I’m doing that here in Tonganoxie, Kansas. How? Our member doctors are sending in testimonials from their patients from all over this nation. We should welcome new knowledge as it is found… that’s what science is all about. Accupuncture won’t swallow us up… it’ll strengthen our medical professions.