Acupuncture and Acupressure - What is Alternative Medicine?

In his “Healing and The Mind” television series on PBS, Bill Moyers visits a hospital in China where a 35-year-old woman was undergoing a brain operation to remove a large tumor in her pituitary gland. Amazingly, the woman was conscious and able to talk to her doctor during the surgery. She felt no pain despite being given only half the drugs that would be administered in the West because her physician used acupuncture needles to help anesthetize her.

In China, acupuncture is most commonly applied for anesthesia. But it can also be used to rebalance a chi disturbance in a patient—whether caused by an external influence such as coldness, an emotional influence such as excess anger, poor diet, or an organ imbalance. Acupuncture, like all Chinese medical therapies, seeks to diagnose a chi imbalance before a detectable, physiological impairment occurs. Acupuncturists focus on helping patients balance the chi energy within and between the five major organ systems: the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys.

To restore health, an acupuncturist uses tiny needles as antennae to direct chi to organs or functions of the body. The needles can also be used to drain chi where it is excessive; to warm parts of the body that are cool or stagnant; to decrease or increase moisture; and to reduce excessive heat. The acupuncturist does this by pinpointing specific points along the body's 14 meridians, which affect the functioning of specific organs, and using needles to slightly puncture and stimulate tissue at these specific points to bring about the desired results. The needles penetrate just below the epidermis and do not draw blood or cause discomfort. The application of heat is also sometimes used, along with massage or electrical pulses.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 104 different conditions have been treated by acupuncture, including migraines, sinusitis, the common cold, tonsillitis, asthma, inflammation of the eyes, addictions, myopia, duodenal ulcer and other gastrointestinal disorders, neuralgia, and osteoarthritis. Acupuncture is now widely used in American hospitals, for example, to reduce pain in patients with sore throats, sickle-cell anemia, dysmenorrhea, dental pain, hysterectomies, chronic back disorders and migraine headaches. It has also been used to help people stop smoking, and to treat alcoholism and opiate addiction.

The December 1, 1992 issue of National Acupuncture Detoxification Association Newsletter cites a significant number of clinical studies which suggest that acupuncture may be the most effective alternative medicine therapy for treating a variety of addictions. It reports two controlled studies on treatment of alcoholic recidivism, for example—one with 80 patients and the other with 54 patients—which found that acupuncture treatment at fixed points was more effective than sham points in reducing expressed need for alcohol, drinking episodes, and hospital admissions for detoxification.

Dr. Jeffrey Holder, founder and director of Exodus, a residential treatment for addictions based in Miami, Florida, states in New Auricular Therapy that every addiction corresponds to a different set of ear acupoints. Every drug of choice thus has a receptor site mechanism located in the ear. What acupuncturists do is satisfy the needs of that receptor site by supplying and directing the endorphins or enkephalins. Using auriculotherapy, Holder reports success rates of over 80% for curing addiction to nicotine, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and other mood-altering substances.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse is currently conducting several clinical trials using acupuncture on heroin addicts in New York City outpatient drug detoxification programs. Detoxification from chronic use of prescribed opiates (morphine, Demeral, etc.) usually takes from three to six months. Even “brief detoxification programs take more than a month. One uncontrolled trial found that after electrical stimulation at ear acupuncture points, 12 out of 14 pain patients (86%) were able to completely withdraw from narcotics in 2–7 days. They also experienced fewer or no side effects.

Several studies, reported in Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide, found that acupuncture was equal to or better than methadone in helping people withdraw from heroin. Methadone treatment programs only substitute a less expensive, longer-acting, government-sanctioned drug. Researchers now think that acupuncture, in combination with a relapse prevention program, can eliminate the heroin addict's need for both methadone and heroin. Acupuncture also claims good success rates with nicotine addiction, where a newly discovered acupoint called “Tien Mi” is used in conjunction with other traditional acupoints, particularly those located in the ear.

In a study conducted at the Lincoln Substance Abuse/Acupuncture Clinic in New York City, reported in the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association Newsletter, 68 pregnant women addicted to crack or cocaine participated in a program in which they received acupuncture treatments in conjunction with a detoxification regimen, counseling, and daily urinalysis tests. The women who attended the program for 10 visits or more showed significantly higher infant birth weights than those who attended less than 10 times.

Currently, there are more than 300 acupuncture clinics worldwide which use acupuncture to treat a variety of mental disorders. In Portland, Oregon, for example, four new acupuncture programs address chronic mental illness. Professor Pierre Huard of the Medical Faculty of Paris, author of Chinese Medicine, and Dr. Ming Wong of the Medical Faculty of Rennes have found that acupuncture is equivalent to the effect of tranquilizers in cases of depression, worry, insomnia, and nervous disorders.

The National Acupuncture Detoxification Association Newsletter also documents a six-month study conducted by Tom Atwood which found that acupuncture may be beneficial in the treatment of schizophrenia and paranoia. In the study, 16 patients in a residential care home received auriculotherapy for a variety of conditions, including paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality disorders. Hospital stays dropped from 27 to eight days following the initiation of acupuncture, compared to records of the previous year. Hypertensive patients experienced reduced blood pressure, and patients generally reported sleeping better. In addition, they became more productive. Atwood notes that “these patients who are normally the most resistant, and the most likely to be readmitted for hospitalization, were also more willing to have acupuncture as opposed to other treatments offered at our center.”

Acupuncture is also used with Chinese herbs to improve AIDS patients' immune function, and reduce uncomfortable or dangerous symptoms, including night sweats, fatigue, and digestive disturbances. Chinese acupuncturist Dr. Wu Bo Ping has used acupuncture with Chinese herbs to treat 160 AIDS patients in Tanzania, according to the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association Newsletter . Holder also states that he has used acupuncture to significantly extend the life span and improve the quality of life in AIDS patients. In addition, the patient's lesions disappeared. Preliminary results of a pilot study conducted at the Kuan Yin Clinic in San Francisco with HIV patients show acupuncture to be beneficial in increasing immune function, white blood cell production, and T-cell production, as well as alleviating many of the symptoms relating to HIV infection and AIDS. Clinic physicians working with AIDS patients have been able to increase T-cell counts from 210 to 270 with just three acupuncture treatments.

Acupressure is a form of acupuncture in which fingers and thumbs rather than needles are used to press chi points on the surface of the body. Acupressure relieves muscular tension, which enables more blood—and therefore more oxygen and nutrients—to be carried to tissue throughout the body. This helps promote both physical calmness and mental alertness, and aids in healing by removing waste products. Like acupuncture, acupressure is now believed to trigger the release of endorphins, the neurochemicals that relieve pain.

Acupressure has been used successfully to release mental tension and stress, provide relief from tired and strained eyes, headaches, premenstrual cramps, and arthritis. It is also used for promoting general health care, relieving stiff shoulders, preventing and combating colds, improving muscle tone, and boosting energy levels.

More than 15 million Americans have visited acupuncturists or acupressurists. Today, there are approximately 9,000 acupuncturists practicing in the U.S. In most states, acupuncturists must be medical doctors and must have certification from the National Commission for the Certification of Acupuncturists. However, as some states do not regulate the practice at all, it is advisable to check a practitioner's credentials.