Where is acupuncture available

After the needle is inserted, there is occasionally a dull ache at the base of the needle that then subsides. Acupuncture is usually relatively painless. Sometimes the needles are heated or stimulated with electricity after insertion. The needles will stay in place for between 5 and 30 minutes. The number of treatments needed depend on the individual. A person with a chronic condition may need one to two treatments a week over several months. An acute problem normally improves after 8 to 12 sessions.

The United States U. Their manufacture and labelling needs to meet certain standards. The needles must be sterile, nontoxic, and labelled for one use only, by a licensed practitioner. As with any complementary therapy, it is advisable to use it alongside conventional treatments in cases of chronic or severe illness. Most states require practitioners to be licensed by this board. People are advised to ask practitioners about their experience and training.

The NCCIH point out that some insurance policies now cover acupuncture, but it is important to check first whether the cost will be covered. A bad back can happen to anyone at any time, and be from doing simple things, such as coughing or sneezing, or serious medical conditions, such as…. Many wonder whether chiropractors are doctors. They are not.

Chiropractors complete a lengthy period of study before becoming licensed, but they are…. Dry needling and acupuncture look similar and involve sticking thin needles into the skin, but they are different practices with different aims.

There are many types of headache. Some are mild and pass quickly, while others can indicate a more serious condition. Acupuncture is already available in most hospital pain clinics and it is provided by an ever-increasing number of GPs and hospital doctors. The BMAS believes that acupuncture should only be used by trained practitioners who can adequately assess the risks and benefits of applying the therapy.

This is in addition to meeting the requirements of the statutory regulatory body for their profession. At the moment, anybody in the UK is allowed to call themselves an acupuncturist and can start advertising and practising acupuncture immediately, regardless of qualifications or experience.

This is not ideal within a healthcare setting, so patients are strongly advised to check the credentials of their practitioner. Acupuncture is a potent therapy, and whilst it is generally safer than most conventional treatments, it should be used with care to avoid serious adverse effects or interactions with other treatments. The ideal promoted by the BMAS is that acupuncture should be fully incorporated into orthodox medicine and used as one of the therapeutic tools available in treatment of a defined range of conditions.

Patients Find a Practitioner. Website designed and developed by Dataware Consultancy Centre. Who are BMAS? Publications Why Join? Many different esoteric theories of diagnosis and treatment emerged, sometimes even contradictory [ 3 ], possibly as competing schools attempted to establish their exclusiveness and influence.

Bronze statues from the fifteenth century show the acupuncture points in use today, and were used for teaching and examination purposes Fig. During the Ming Dynasty — , The Great Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion was published, which forms the basis of modern acupuncture.

In it are clear descriptions of the full set of points that represent openings to the channels through which needles could be inserted to modify the flow of Qi energy [ 7 ]. It should be noted that knowledge of health and disease in China developed purely from observation of living subjects because dissection was forbidden and the subject of anatomy did not exist. This bronze figure showing acupuncture points is a reproduction of one cast in ad Interest in acupuncture among the Chinese declined from the seventeenth century onwards as it came to be regarded as superstitious and irrational [ 2 , 6 ].

It was excluded from the Imperial Medical Institute by decree of the Emperor in The knowledge and skill were retained, however, either as an interest among academics or in everyday use by rural healers.

After the installation of the Communist government in , traditional forms of medicine including acupuncture were reinstated, possibly for nationalistic motives but also as the only practical means of providing even basic levels of health to the massive population. The divergent strands of acupuncture theory and practice were brought together in a consensus known as traditional Chinese medicine TCM [ 8 ], which also included herbal medicine.

Acupuncture research institutes were established in the s throughout China and treatment became available in separate acupuncture departments within Western-style hospitals. Over the same period, a more scientific explanation of acupuncture was sought by Prof. The spread of acupuncture to other countries occurred at various times and by different routes. In the sixth century, Korea and Japan assimilated Chinese acupuncture and herbs into their medical systems [ 6 ]. Both countries still retain these therapies, mostly in parallel with Western medicine.

Acupuncture arrived in Vietnam when commercial routes opened up between the eighth and tenth centuries. In the West, France adopted acupuncture rather sooner than other countries [ 7 ]. Jesuit missionaries first brought back reports of acupuncture in the sixteenth century, and the practice was embraced by French clinicians fairly widely. Berlioz, father of the composer, ran clinical trials on acupuncture and wrote a text in [ 11 ].

French acupuncture today has been deeply influenced by a diplomat, Souliet du Morant, who spent many years in China and published a number of treatises about acupuncture from onwards. The first medical description of acupuncture by a European physician was by Ten Rhijne, in about , who worked for the East India Company and witnessed acupuncture practice in Japan [ 6 , 11 ]. Interestingly, this comment was deleted from subsequent issues [ 14 ]. He described the experience in the New York Times [ 15 ] and subsequently teams of US physicians made fact-finding tours of China to assess acupuncture, particularly its use for surgical analgesia [ 16 ].

Despite initial excitement at the operations they witnessed, acupuncture proved to be utterly unreliable as an analgesic for surgery in the West. Acupuncture finally reached its present level of acceptability in the USA when an NIH consensus conference reported that there was positive evidence for its effectiveness, at least in a limited range of conditions [ 17 ].

Ancient concepts of Qi flowing in meridians have been displaced in the minds of many practitioners by a neurological model, based on evidence that acupuncture needles stimulate nerve endings and alter brain function, particularly the intrinsic pain inhibitory mechanisms [ 10 ]. The first magnetic resonance imaging study of acupuncture may also prove to be a landmark [ 20 ]. Other workers have noted the marked similarity between the trigger points of Travell [ 21 ] with their specific pain referral patterns, and the sites of traditional acupuncture points with their associated meridians [ 22 ].

There is a plethora of suggested mechanisms of action of acupuncture, but little valid data on which, if any, mechanisms are relevant to clinical practice.

Huang KC. Acupuncture: the past and the present. New York: Vantage, Ma KW. The roots and development of Chinese acupuncture: from prehistory to early 20th century. Acupunct Med ; 10 Suppl : 92 —9. Basser S. Acupuncture: a history. Sci Rev Altern Med ; 3 : 34 — Chen Y. Silk scrolls: earliest literature of meridian doctrine in ancient China. Acupunct Electrother Res ; 22 : — A medical report from the stone age? Lancet ; : —5. Baldry PE.

Acupuncture, trigger points and musculoskeletal pain. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, Kaplan G. J Altern Complement Med ; 3 : 5. Birch S, Kaptchuk T. History, nature and current practice of acupuncture: an East Asian perspective. In: Ernst E, White A, eds. Acupuncture: a scientific appraisal.