Acupuncture has proven itself useful yet again in a study in Sydney, Australia, that focussed on the use of a single acupuncture point for treating post-operative nausea. The study showed that those who received the acupuncture treatment on that point were less likely to feel nauseous or sick than patients who did not receive the treatment, or who received sham treatment, such as the use of a different point.
There are a couple of interesting points to note about this study. First, this is yet another study showing the usefulness of Acupuncture. But the really interesting thing about the study is only obvious when we look at the big picture here. This study was conducted using a single needle at a single point. That is nothing an Acupuncturist would normally do. Acupuncture is not so rigid as to be limited to a one point treatment.
When Acupuncture is applied in the traditional way, it is as much a form of art as it is a science. A traditionally trained Acupuncturist like myself will insert a number of needles at different points and is not controlled by a rigid set of guidelines prescribing a certain set of points. That is ‘cookbook acupuncture’ like some doctors do. Acupuncture does not work in that way. You can’t say that because a patient presents with symptoms A+B+C, you should use point 1-2-3 and so on.
Acupuncture is much more complicated than that. We may insert as many as 20 needles at different points, and those points may vary from one patient to the next even if they showed the exact same symptoms. That is because each patient is unique in his/her make up and we say in Chinese ‘we treat the person who has a disorder, not the disorder the patient has’. There are so many factors involved that it would be impossible to try and quantify them.
Acupuncture is much more than just taking a needle and using one point, and yet, even doing so appears to work quite well in some clinical trials! Imagine how much stronger the effect of Acupuncture would be if the study allowed experienced Acupuncture practitioners to take part.
There’s another thing worth noting here: until recently, western medicine was very uncomfortable with the idea of integrating Acupuncture at all. In fact, there are still many old school doctors who still feel that way, completely unaware of the research proving its efficacy. The western system of medicine simply isn’t comfortable with the idea that physicians from 3000 years ago in ancient China knew more about health than doctors do today, and yet this is most certainly the case. If you read the classical Chinese Medical texts, as I have, you will find that the doctors of that time in China knew far more about the human body and how health really operates than most doctors do today. So for many years western medicine fought the idea that Acupuncture could work at all and there’s still a lot of denial that Acupuncture has any use whatsoever. Strangely enough, now a lot of western doctors are using some form of Acupuncture in their practice. They tend to call it medical acupuncture, for one of a better word. We call it what I mentioned before ‘cookbook acupuncture’, because most of them have very little or no training in Acupuncture whatsoever. And you would think that if they had the patients welfare at heart, they would send their patient to a proper acupuncturist no? So why don’t they? I leave that answer to you.
Getting back to the study mentioned in the beginning, a surgical procedure was performed on patients, and then Acupuncture was only allowed to be used to treat that patient’s nausea following the procedure. That use of acupuncture fits very well in the current model of how western medicine views Acupuncture. Western medicine thinks that only prescription drugs and surgery can do the ‘real work’ of healing, and that Acupuncture should only be used to treat secondary symptoms, such as pain or nausea.
This is rather blatant marginalization of acupuncture, and it is the only way in which modern medicine feels comfortable to discuss Acupuncture at all. If they can keep Acupuncture trapped in a small box called ‘approved uses,’ they can effectively marginalize this entire field of medicine and continue to rely on drugs and surgery. But the reality is that Acupuncture has far greater potential than this. Acupuncture can treat most conditions western medicine treats, and I refer you to a list published by the World Health Organisations of conditions amenable to Acupuncture. The great forte of acupuncture lies in preventive medicine and treatment of chronic disorders.
