Acupuncture originated in China, and other far eastern cultures, where it still features in mainstream healthcare, both as a stand-alone therapy and in combination with conventional western medicine. It is widely used and accepted all over the world, in situations ranging from hospital emergency rooms in Italy to the US military treating injured personnel. In the UK, sections of our own NHS make use of acupuncture in for example, mental health, midwifery and pain control; the NHS Gateway Clinic serves London GPs across three boroughs, and delivers 15 000 treatments per year.
Many people consult an acupuncturist wanting help with specific symptoms. They may for example, want to relieve lower back pain, or the pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee. There are simply too many specific conditions seen in the acupuncture clinic to list here, ranging as they do all the way from migraine to morning sickness. Additionally, some people use acupuncture because they feel generally unwell but have no obvious diagnosis. Because traditional Chinese acupuncture is a treatment tailored especially for each individual, it often has the effect of helping the main complaint, whilst simultaneously providing a ripple of secondary benefits felt in one’s wider sense of health and wellbeing. This is a feature which is making acupuncture particularly attractive to many people nowadays.
In the Articles menu on the right, you will find a lot of evidence from medical researchers worldwide, to support acupuncture’s effectiveness across a very broad range of conditions, and you are always welcome to telephone to enquire about a particular complaint. For some conditions, you may already be under the care of your GP or a specialist; seeing an acupuncturist aswell is not usually a problem, and I would encourage you to tell your doctor you are doing so. GPs are interested to learn of other treatments which have helped their patients. In fact, Dutch researchers have found that patients whose GP has some additional training in complementary medicine, have up to 30% lower mortality and healthcare costs: they looked at data on 150 000 people collected from 2000 GPs, and found the savings resulted from fewer hospital stays and fewer prescription drugs (European Journal of Health Economics, on-line 22 June 2011).
UK researchers have recently found acupuncture to have significant and sustained benefits for people who frequently visit their GP with medically unexplained physical symptoms: eighty such adults took part in a randomised controlled trial across four London general practices. The acupuncture group showed reduced medication use, fewer GP visits,and a wide range of health benefits, including increased physical &/or mental energy, greater personal control, calmness and relaxation (British Journal of General Practice, June 2011).
We can also say with considerable confidence, that acupuncture is one of the safest forms of medical intervention in use in the UK today (1,2,3).
(1) The York Acupuncture Safety Study: A Prospective Survey of 34000 Treatments by Traditional Acupuncturists. British Medical Journal 2001.
(2) Adverse Events following Acupuncture: Prospective Survey of 32000 Consultations with Doctors and Physiotherapists. British Medical Journal 2001.
(3) Patient Reports of Adverse Events Associated with Acupuncture Treatment: A Prospective National Survey. Qual Saf Health Care 2004.