Acupuncture Is A Proven Remedy For The Relief of Pain

According to a May 2010 study, conducted by researchers at the Rochester Medical Center, acupuncture in Cleveland definitely works for the relief of pain.

Acupuncture does not rely on conventional Western medical principles and is an alternative form of healing system that has been the subject of intense debate and discussion about whether it just relies on the belief of the patient that it works to deliver results or if it truly works.

In Western medicine, a health problem is directly addressed and for this reason it relies heavily on medications and drugs. Acupuncture, which is a branch of TCM or (Traditional Chinese medicine), follows a more indirect route; acupuncturists believe in and practice the holistic healing of the body instead of focusing on one part of the body. For them, balance between the spirit, mind, and body is of utmost importance, and the manner by which this is established is through correction of the movement of vital energy or “chi”, within the body.

Among the various ancient Chinese medical treatments, acupuncture is probably the most famous in the West. To correct the uneven circulation of energy, acupuncture needles are applied at specific points in the body in order to restore health. For a lot of Western medical researchers, acupuncture is a technique they believe really does not produce any health benefits. According to them, acupuncture treatment should not lead to a cure of illness and that it is unable to return a patient to full health.

Western medicine has a problem because a lot of studies that have been done about acupuncture consistently show that acupuncture truly works and this cannot be refuted. In a lot of instances, success has been achieved after conventional Western treatments have proved unsuccessful in curing the patient. Yes, acupuncture may not be able to remedy every illness and disease any more than western medicine can, and this argument has been used as an excuse by a lot of people in the West to brush it aside and see it as quackery.

The findings from the Rochester Medical Center have actually tested acupuncture to see whether its effects are merely psychosomatic or if it truly addresses health issues. The researchers sought to find whether a desired outcome comes from the patient being manipulated into believing that acupuncture will work, or if the treatment really works.

The Rochester researchers used mice with sore paws. Acupuncture treatment was given to all the mice in the same manner it would be given to humans. Obviously, the mice carry no biases or beliefs on whether the therapy was going to work or not.

A natural painkiller known as adenosine was measured in the mice after the treatment. High amounts of adenosine can help relieve a person when he is experiencing pain. Results of the study showed that the adenosine levels in the mice increased by 20000 percent and 67 percent of the mice experienced a reduction of pain compared to mice not treated with acupuncture.

The study seemed to prove beyond doubt that acupuncture is a bona fide alternative remedy for the relief of pain. To be fair, the outcomes that have been gotten from animal experiments are not quite the same as those obtained from experiments on humans. This is the reason why Rochester researchers refused to support the notion that acupuncture needles can restore balance to the vital energy in the body or that energy flow in the body gone wrong can be corrected.

A patient suffering from pain would only want to find relief from it. Most probably, he will not be interested on whether his body is not balanced or whether the vital energy within him is not flowing smoothly as it normally should. If the illness dissipates or the pain stops, then the patient is happy and the acupuncture treatment is successful.

Besides pain, acupuncture treatment can resolve several other issues including smoking addiction and weight gain. It can help people with fertility problems succeed with IVF treatment, something that in no way associates with the release of natural opioids in the body, as detractors of acupuncture are quick to point out. From all these, we can see that that there’s more to acupuncture than its ability to relieve pain.