Why Acupuncture/Traditional Medicine?

According to the World Health Organization:

25% of modern medicines are made from plants first used traditionally.
Acupuncture has been proven effective in relieving postoperative pain, nausea during pregnancy, nausea and vomiting resulting from chemotherapy, and dental pain with extremely low side effects.
It can also alleviate anxiety, panic disorders and insomnia.
In China, traditional herbal preparations account for 30-50% of the total medicinal consumption.
In Europe, North America and other industrialized regions, over 50% of the population have used complementary or alternative medicine at least once.
70% of the population in Canada have used complementary medicine at least once.
In San Francisco, London and South Africa, 75% of people living with HIV/AIDS use traditional/traditional Chinese Medicine.
In the United States, 158 million of the adult population use complementary medicines and according to the USA Commission for Alternative and Complementary medicines, $17 billion was spent on traditional remedies in 2000.
The global market for herbal medicines currently stands at over $60 billion annually and is growing steadily.

And in recent news, acupuncture has been shown effective in reducing and reversing hair loss in chemotherapy patients; it also reduces the feeling of heat in chemo/radiation patients.

A 2002 German study compared the efficacy of in-vitro fertilization alone vs. IVF + acupuncture and found that acupuncture significantly benefits the treatment of infertility.

In this study, 80 women received IVF + acupuncture and another 80 women received IVF-alone. In the acupuncture group 34 women got pregnant (42.5%). In the IVF-alone group only 21 women got pregnant (26.3%).

A recent American study of 114 women yielded similar results: of the group that received IVF + acupuncture, 51% got pregnant whereas only 36% of women who received IVF alone got pregnant.

Perhaps even more tellingly, the rate of miscarriage in the IVF-alone group was 20%, whereas in the IVF + acupuncture group only 8% miscarried—and the acupuncture group also showed a lower rate of ectopic pregnancy.

– Dr. Danchak