10 Medical Benefits Of Acupuncture

In this article, I’m going to cover the scientific evidence of Acupuncture as it stands today. 

We’ll cover conditions such as: allergic rhinitis (hay fever), migraine prevention, post operative pain and nausea, chronic low back pain, chemotherapy induced vomiting and nausea, osteoarthritis and more.

10 Medical Benefits of Acupuncture

The quality of research for acupuncture as a treatment that provides medical benefit has increased over past two decades. 

In fact, there’s been more than 12,500 studies in over 50 countries, including several hundred meta-analyses studies. 

The Acupuncture Evidence Project, reviewed the effectiveness of acupuncture for 122 treatments and found the effectiveness in over 110 medical conditions. There were stronger evidence for some conditions more than others.

In the hands of a trained acupuncturist, acupuncture was found to be cost-effective for a number of medical conditions including: 

• Chronic low back pain
• Allergic rhinitis (hay fever)
• Chemotherapy induced vomiting
• Chemotherapy induced nausea
• Post-operative pain
• Post operative nausea
• Post operative nausea
• Migraine prevention 
• Osteoarthritis.

Medical Benefits of Acupuncture With Promising Evidence

The research from the Acupuncture evidence project found over 40 possible medical benefits of Acupuncture that show promise, but more research is needed. 

Among the 40+ include: 

• Acute stroke
• Anxiety
• Asthma in adults
• Cancer pain
• Cancer related fatigue
• Constipation
• Insomnia
• Irritable bowel syndrome, 
• Labour pain,
• Lateral elbow pain
• Menopausal hot flashes
• Neck pain, obesity
• Post stroke insomnia and spasticity
• Post traumatic stress disorder
• Sciatica, 
• Shoulder pain 
• Stroke rehabilitation 

How Do The Benefits of Acupuncture Compare With Other Treatments

Using a method known as a Network Meta-analysis, it’s possible to see how acupuncture stacks up against other treatments for the same condition. 

Below are some comparisons.

A network meta-analysis in 2013 compared the treatment for knee osteoarthritis in high quality studies, which found acupuncture had the largest effect compared to usual care and out-performed both exercise and weight-loss.

More recently in 2015 a network meta-analysis compared the treatment for shoulder impingement syndrome with alongside exercise. They found acupuncture was the most effective of all 17 procedures, outperforming non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s), ultrasound therapy and administering steroid injections.

There was another in 2016 comparing 20 medical treatments for sciatica, which concluded by ranking acupuncture as the 2nd most effective behind biological agents, outperforming opioids, disc surgery, manipulation, epidurals, exercise, and radio-frequency denervation.

Finally in 2018, a network-meta-analysis for the treatment of constipation found acupuncture was more effective than drugs and had the fewest side-effects

How Does Evidence of Acupuncture Compare With Western Medicine?

To see the true benefit of acupuncture, we need to compare the evidence to other prescribed treatments. 

Looking at the evidence for medical treatment in the proceedings of the Mayo Clinic in 2013, was a review that looked at the evidence for the standard of care (guidelines for what doctors prescribe) recommended against it’s own current practice 46% of the time! 

This means, the recommendation of more than 70 of the 146 medical treatments reviewed were reversed. 

Another review found only half of the medical treatments prescribed by doctors were evidence-based.

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found evidence was unable to support or refute 49% of current medical treatments and 48% of American College of Cardiology recommendations were by expert opinion only, without scientific evidence to back it up. 

In short, nearly half of medical practice doesn’t have strong evidence for their use, making the evidence for acupuncture look impressive. 

What Are The Risks of Acupuncture? 

We’ve covered the proven medical benefits of acupuncture but what are the risks.

The majority of research finds Acupuncture safe in the hands of a trained acupuncturist. 

In Australia a university trained acupuncturist is required to have 1200 clinical hours experience before being able to graduate. 

The safety of Acupuncture comes in question when practitioners from other modalities trained in dry needling or medical acupuncture (acupuncture by a western doctor). 

This is because these courses are started and finished over a single weekend. This means that there are Doctors, chiropractors, osteopaths and others that only have a few hours experience before using it on the unsuspecting public. 

Your safest option is to seek a registered acupuncturist with AHPRA. 

How Can You Get The Most Medical Benefits From Acupuncture?

Acupuncture is a therapy, not a one off treatment. Acupuncture works in the same way going to the gym works. 

You’ll feel great relief afterward, but going to the gym once won’t make you fit, you have to have a period of sessions to produce a measurable change.

Acupuncture works very quick and there will be noticeable changes after the first appointment, however after a couple of days your bodies normal function will return to where is was before. 

This means you’ll benefit most with a treatment plan of acupuncture. 

For many chronic conditions, a treatment plan may involve 3 visits per week for 1 month, 2 visits per week for two months and 1 visit per week for 1-2 months or similar. 

This doesn’t mean you have to wait that long to see a result, results should be noticed quickly. 

This type of plan allows you to get the immediate benefits of acupuncture and also have enough appointments that it raises the function of the vascular system to the point that your results hold without any more external treatment. 

How Does Acupuncture Relieve Pain?

First, nerves are stimulated and when those nerves are stimulated a signal travels to the spine and up to the midbrain where it jump starts the midbrain to release enkephalins (the bodies own pain killers).

When the pain signal is reduced by these enkephalins the brain accepts the knee is okay and expands the small blood vessels around the knee, pushing blood back into the area. 

It’s the delivery of blood, oxygen and nutrient and the removal of waste product which is helps the knee to heal.

What Else Does Acupuncture Do?

Acupuncture directs blood flow around the body. 

Adequate blood circulation is one of our bodies tools to remove waste product from different areas of the body (like a garbage man). 

But what happens if you have a lack of blood flow to an area? What happens if the trash man doesn’t pick up the trash? It builds up.

Inside our blood contains vital substances including hormones, nutrients, oxygen and more. 

What happens if blood flow to an area is reduced? The bodies resources (hormones, oxygen, nutrient and more) cannot be fully utilized.

For example If a woman has a lack of blood flow to her uterus, from a Chinese medicine perspective, she’ll be more likely to develop problems in that area such as fibroids and cysts. 

In this situation the use of Acupuncture signals the midbrain to circulate blood back through those areas to clean out the waste product and supply the area with the required resources.

The most common cause of disease in Chinese medicine is Blood Stasis (blocked blood flow). 

As we age, chronic health problems become more common and recovery from aches and pains takes longer because our vascular function declines, blood flow slows, making problems more difficult to heal on their own. A bruise that takes 2 days to heal as a child, now take 2 weeks.  

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine focus on increases the function of the vascular system to a higher level so the body can deal with problems with its own resources.

When DOESN’T Acupuncture Work?

We have seen many medical benefits of Acupuncture but when doesn’t acupuncture provide benefit? 

In regarding pain, acupuncture works extremely well, however acupuncture doesn’t produce lasting relief if there’s a severe structural problem such as a bone directly pushing on a nerve than needs to be removed or conditions where the physical structure cannot be changed such as ankylosing spondylitis. 

The other Scenario when acupuncture doesn’t work well is when there’s a diseased nervous system such as late stage motor-neurone disease because acupuncture requires the nervous system to send signals to the brain to produce an effect.

Is Acupuncture An Energy Medicine?

Acupuncture has always been a physical medicine that treats real tissue, not energy meridians.

There’s been a lot of confusion in the medical community since it’s introduction to the west. 

Chinese medicine entered Europe in the 1600’s in the form of a book called the Huang Di Nei Jing. 

The challenge at the time was that it was written in an ancient Chinese dialect. Almost nobody in the west could read or translate these books because it took PhD professors in the Han language to translate the texts.

However, this didn’t stop westerners making attempts at translating them. The initial translations were close until disaster struck in 1938 when George Soulie De Morant, a French diplomat decided to write three books on Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

The reason it was a disaster is because he was a well known intellectual who’d written books on Chinese culture, but had no medical background and no PhD in the Han language.

It turns out he made several huge mistakes and the image of Chinese medicine and acupuncture has suffered in the west because of them ever since. 

He was the first person to ever translate the word qi as energy, without any historical basis in China for such a translation!

In reality there’s twelve translations in Chinese/English medical texts for qi and not one of them is energy. The translation by PhD’s in the Han language is vapour, vital air or the essence of air (oxygen).

The second mistake De Morant made was translating the word Mai as meridian. The problem was the concept of a meridian in China didn’t even exist. The translation of Mai by PhD’s in the language is vessel or Xue Mai, meaning blood vessel.

As you can see, this completely changes the application of Chinese medicine. De Morant is the reason Chinese medicine is described as an energy medicine. 

It’s even what you’ll find if you type Chinese medicine or acupuncture into Wikipedia, however it still remains unchanged.  

The Chinese knew the lungs breath in the da-qi (great-air) and the lungs extracted the qi (essence of air/oxygen) from the da-qi (great air). The Chinese were referring to oxygen, not energy. 

How does blood, Qi (vital air/oxygen) and nutrient travel around the body? It’s not via imaginary meridians but by blood circulation through actual blood vessels.

Acupuncture Works On Physical Tissue

Acupuncture has always focused on real anatomy. The Chinese were performing dissections before the turn of Christ, they named the organs and described what they do, the heart and what it’s function was. 

They knew the heart was the primary organ that pumped blood through the blood vessels, distributing oxygen and nutrient to the vital organs. To put this into context, Western medicine didn’t know the heart pumped blood until the 16th century! 

The Chinese described the lungs, the liver, gall bladder, kidneys, spleen and reproductive organs. They were so detailed they listed the volume, size and weight of what the average organ should be. 

They knew which vessels flowed away from the heart and which flowed back to the heart, which organs were supported by which vessels and how long they were supposed to be. 

When you have a PhD in an ancient language you have rules to adhere to, you can’t just make stuff up. 

That’s why the French diplomat admitted he was wrong in his third book, declaring a meridian was in fact a physical vessel all along. 

But the damage had been done to the perception of Chinese medicine and acupuncture in the west.

The false energy model proposed by De Morant attracted alternative types and resistance from the medical community. 

Westerners brainwashed in the energy model open clinics with names that suggest an energy medicine, in energy healing clinics and even waxing studio’s!

Meanwhile In China, Chinese medicine boasts their own multilevel hospitals that treat serious illness and disease. Clearly something has gone wrong, and it all started with a mistranslation. 

What Does Chinese medicine & Acupuncture Do?

Both Chinese medicine and acupuncture aren’t here to balance chakras, or energy. 

What this medicine is about is vascular. It’s about increasing blood, oxygen and nutrient distribution through the body. 

Chinese medicine is concerned with blood flow and the health of the vascular system, the internal plumbing and how it’s working.

In Chinese medicine everything in the body requires Qi (vital air/oxygen), nutrient and blood to function correctly. It’s how every part of the human body is supported. 

If there’s a lack of these resources to any organ or tissue, it will become dysfunctional or diseased depending on the level of restriction. 

For example, if I put a rubber band around my finger and cut off blood flow, I’m going to have problems. 

When tissue isn’t supported by blood, it’ also not going to get enough hormones, natural painkillers, oxygen (qi) or nutrient (Ying qi) and more. 

What’s happens if I kept that rubber band on my finger? The tissue becomes starved and eventually becomes so diseased it dies. 

How quickly that happens depends on how tight the rubber band is. If it’s really tight, it won’t survive long. A little tight, it will still happen but it’s a slower process.

One of the many principles of treatment in Chinese medicine is to take the rubber band off, to get blood moving back into organs and tissues that are dysfunctional or diseased because it’s inside the blood that contains all of the bodies materials to heal.

In fact, the definition of health in Chinese medicine is; “Highly oxygenated, highly nutritious blood, coursing through the body with a healthy pump (heart)”.

Summary of the medical benefits of Acupuncture

With the help from the Acupuncture Evidence Project I was amble to summarise the evidence more quickly. 

Acupuncture has strong to moderate evidence in over 40 medical conditions and is considered safe in the hands of trained practitioners. 

The strong scientific support is impressive and helpful for patients in the context of a conventional healthcare system where nearly half of all treatments lack evidence for their use.

Comparatively, for many conditions Acupuncture has greater scientific evidence than many conventional treatments and is often much safer.