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A Healthy Poke: Demystifying the Science Behind Acupuncture

Many of us have started to embrace the use of alternative medicine, but acupuncture, with its qi, yin, and meridians, still raises eyebrows…

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While many practices in alternative medicine are slowly but surely making their way into the mainstream, acupuncture is one that still produces skeptical eyebrow raises. This phenomenon is partly due to linguistics. Scientists have worked to elucidate the mechanisms by which yoga, meditation, and various dietary interventions may work on the cells of the body, but there is something fundamentally more ancient-feeling about the language of acupuncture. Go to the NIH’s website on complementary and alternative medicine (NCCAM), and even here you’ll find a discussion that involves qi, yin, yang, and meridians.

Is it possible to discuss acupuncture in a way that makes sense to even the most Westernized brains? The short answer is yes — but with the caveat there there is no single unifying explanation for how it works. While acupuncture has been demonstrated to be useful in pain management and in treating the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, other uses have had more mixed results when studied scientifically.

Dr. Leena Mathew is an attending physician in Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. She uses acupuncture as an “adjunct analgesic modality,” meaning that she uses it as a complementary treatment for pain in her patients should they require or prefer it. She and Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of NCCAM, discussed with us the most likely theories of the mechanisms behind acupuncture.

Continue reading here:
m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/09/a-healthy-poke-demystifying-the-science-behind-acupuncture/245816/

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