It seems that there’s someone who’s offering a magic potion or miracle cure that can allegedly alleviate your medical problem everywhere you turn. There are multitudes of options to turn to that makes choosing the best one difficult, or one that actually works at all. If you want an alternative treatment for Western medicine, there’s hypnotherapy, biofeedback, homeopathy, massage therapy, reflexology, Ayurvedic medicine, chiropractic, and naturopathy to name just a few. Each of these options has their own specific benefits and disadvantages that can offer you a better way of life.

One of the most popular alternative therapies in the world is acupuncture. However, many are wondering if this treatment really works. Is it just another scam or is there anything to it? Is there a genuine benefit to this millennia-old practice or is it something one has to believe in order to make it work? To all of those questions, the answer is a positive one for acupuncture. It works and this is backed up by a number of scientific studies; and it works regardless of what you think of it.

Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture in Bellingham are the main means of healthcare for a third of humanity. Acupuncture is believed to be more than 5,000 years old and has been documented for over three millennia. It wasn’t a widely known treatment in the States until 1972 when it was “introduced” in the country by a New York journalist who was operated on in China for an appendectomy (surgical removal of the appendix). During his postsurgical recovery, instead of medications, he was treated with acupuncture to help alleviate his discomfort and pain. He wrote about his experience in the New York Times and since then, acupuncture has grown to be the most commonly used alternative treatment in the US.

In the field of medical research, one of the most difficult things to do is to assess the amount of pain relief of a patient. Each of us has different perceptions and thresholds of pain. One topic often associated with acupuncture is the placebo effect. A powerful organ, the mind actually has a healing ability, and in a lot of individuals, the placebo effect can be very powerful. That being said, one need not be an adherent or a fan of acupuncture in order for it to work. However, the end effects can be a whole lot better if you have a positive feeling coming into the treatment instead of a negative one. As your mind can bring about positive outcomes, so too can it help generate negative results. The fact that acupuncture works on animals proves conclusively that on its own it is a real genuine treatment and is the best evidence in debunking any theories that acupuncture is merely a placebo effect. Some skeptics have argued that no case of animal acupuncture treatment has yet produced that it really works. It seems there is still no study that has endeavored to group several dogs or cats together all suffering from the same condition and have undergone the same set of therapies. In real life, what you will witness is a lot of animal lovers who have had their pet treated with acupuncture and have seen with their own eyes their beloved pet make remarkable improvements with just a single treatment.

For pro-acupuncture people who would not rather use the argument of acupuncture working on animals, they can cite the numerous studies of acupuncture’s therapeutic effects made by government agencies, organizations, and universities. Many of these studies have proven that acupuncture is truly effective in the management of pain. For chronic pain sufferers, this is a very important revelation as it may help them rely less on toxic drugs that produce unwanted side effects. NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) have been known to cause gastrointestinal bleeding while myocardial infarction or heart attack has been associated with the use of Vioxx. Several studies have outright proven acupuncture’s effectiveness for infertility, digestive disorders, anxiety, asthma, insomnia, and various types of health issues in women, including PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), interstitial cystitis, and endometriosis. The WHO (World Health Organization) and the NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) state that acupuncture can be a reliable option for more than 50 various types of acute and chronic health conditions.

But even if you mention all of these to some people they will still argue that acupuncture is a type of treatment that is not evidence based. Western medicine research proving the benefits of the treatment is minimal despite the fact that evidence exists supporting the benefits of acupuncture. Compared to Western medicine, it’s not really a level playing field either. With a budget of $24 billion, the NIH (National Institute of Health) has allocated to the NCCAM , which is actually a subsidiary of the NIH, a measly $100 million. Only roughly a quarter of Western medicine is evidence based despite the NIH’s gigantic budget. Chinese medicine is the main form of healthcare for about a third of the global population. Those people use Chinese medicine and acupuncture because it simply is effective and safe. The most important thing you need to know is that Chinese medicine and acupuncture work.