Acupuncture and acupressure are methods of traditional Chinese medicine that are used to balance a person?s life force, or qi (pronounced ?chee?). When a person?s qi is out of sync, it?s believed to cause illness or pain. While both acupuncture and acupressure are said to help increase flow through specific pathways in the body, there?s a pointed difference between these treatments. In acupunct...

Background. Clinical studies suggest that acupuncture and moxibustion therapy in ulcerative colitis (UC) can regulate bowel inflammation, and these treatments have the advantages of low rates of adverse reactions and recurrence as well as good long-term efficacy. We reviewed the current status of clinical studies of the treatment. Methods. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using the therapy a...

BACKGROUND The instant-treatment effect of acupuncture for patients with migraines has been corroborated in numerous studies. However, most diseases are chronic and tend to recur, so the long-term effect of acupuncture can verify the existence of sustained efficacy or the placebo effect. Evaluating the efficacy of acupuncture in the prophylaxis of migraine without aura (MWoA) in China is also i...

BACKGROUND Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is gastrointestinal functional disorder which is multifactorial with unknown etiology. There are several modalities for treatment of it. Acupuncture is increasingly used in numerous diseases, also in gastrointestinal disorders like IBS. The purpose of the study was to assess the effects of catgut embedding acupuncture in improving of IBS. MATERIALS AN...

INTRODUCTION Adequate needling at LI11 (Quchi) can be achieved by perpendicular angulation of the needle so that the needle tip enters the extensor carpi radialis longus (ECRL) muscle, which corresponds to the dermatomes and myotomes of the fifth and sixth cervical spinal segments. Although indirect methods using modern technology can be used to examine the variable effects of different depths ...

Abstract: Acupuncture is increasingly used in children; however, the safety of pediatric acupuncture has yet to be reported from systematic review. Acupuncture has become a dominant complementary and alternative modality in clinical practice today but its associated risk has been questioned. The National Institutes of Health Consensus Statement states “one of the advantages of acupuncture is th...

CONTEXT Migraine headaches are common, debilitating, underdiagnosed, and undertreated, and medications are not always effective. Research has shown that acupuncture may be an effective and safe adjuvant or alternative migraine treatment. OBJECTIVE The purpose of the current study was to evaluate whether a standardized set of acupuncture points, when used to deliver treatment over a predefined...

To evaluate the effect of acupuncture on the severity of withdrawal reaction during rapid opiate detoxification (ROD), forty adult male subjects addicted to opioids and scheduled for ROD by naloxone were randomly divided into acupuncture and control groups. In the acupuncture group during three consecutive days immediately before induction of ROD, body acupuncture was performed while in the con...

OBJECTIVES To examine whether acupuncture could improve cognitive deficits and reduce the loss of neurons in mice models of ageing. METHODS Male 7.5-month-old senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) and age-matched senescence-resistant inbred strains 1 (SAMR1) were divided into four groups (n=15 per group): SAMP8 acupuncture group (Pa), SAMP8 non-acupuncture point control group (Pn), SAM...

When an acupuncture needle is inserted into a designated point on the body and mechanical or electrical stimulation is delivered, various neural and neuroactive components are activated. The collection of the activated neural and neuroactive components distributed in the skin, muscle, and connective tissues surrounding the inserted needle is defined as a neural acupuncture unit (NAU). The tradi...