So can you show me some proof?
Does acupuncture do what its says on tin?
In a word, the answer to both questions is a resounding YES!
Acupuncture has been consistently and continually practiced in China and beyond for at least the last 2500 years for which we have very good evidence (and probably even much longer, but we’ll leave that for a future post).
During most of that time the Chinese Doctors of the last 2 millennia collected many hundred of thousands of case studies as well as experiential and empirical knowledge of what worked and what didn’t.
They had not though been as obsessed as we are in the West in RCTs (Randomised Controlled Trials) as the be all and end all of ‘evidence’ that the medicine is based on. So although there is indeed a huge mountain of evidence that acupuncture works its only in the last few decades that the Western methodology of testing what works in medicine has become prevalent.
That said there is a growing amount of good quality research done all over the world which I can point you towards. I’d like to start locally with our very own NHS, with whats become an annual update on acupuncture produced and collated by NHS Evidence which is a great little resource, follow the link below to check it out:
The 2010 Annual Evidence Update on Acupuncture aims to identify, organise and present all relevant systematic reviews and large-scale randomised controlled trials (RCTs) published between February 2009 and February 2010.
