Tag Archive for: acupuncture

Acupuncture vs drugs

Amusing reasoning of advantages of acupuncture over drugs for pain relief in an article on military medicine:

“Imagine being a military medic on a combat patrol that is ambushed and suffers casualties. Although several of your wounded troops have painful injuries, their trigger fingers still work and you need them to continue fighting.

Instead of morphine, you grab your acupuncture needles and quickly stimulate the appropriate auricular acupoints. Pain relief is an essential component of combat casualty care; however, the use of narcotics risks taking the service member completely out of the fight.

Beyond pain control, the potential advantages of BA (battlefield acupuncture) to the injured warrior include staying in the fight with no alteration in sensorium and no nausea or vomiting. In addition, the use of narcotics would force the transport of patients on litters. More combat team members would be required to carry a patient than are required to provide ambulatory assistance for a patient still lucid enough to walk.”

Fertility acupuncture for trying to conceive

Success. After taking control when trying to conceive

Tracy Ryan had given up hope of having a second child. Two years of trying to conceive, including three failed artificial inseminations, had finally culminated in a successful in vitro fertilization-and 2-year-old Christopher. But further attempts at IVF had left Ryan, 35, disappointed and exhausted.

Desperate to feel better, the stay-at-home mom from Fair Haven, N.J., decided to try acupuncture, kick her six-can-a-day Diet Pepsi habit, and eat more fish, fruits, and vegetables. Eight weeks later and slimmer by 7 pounds, Ryan was shocked to discover that she was pregnant. “I was literally shaking when I saw the pregnancy test,” she says. “My husband made me buy a different brand to verify it.”

Acupuncture increases Adenosine 24-fold

Would you like to hear about the latest breakthrough in acupuncture? I have came across an article on the mechanism of acupuncture in the latest issue of the journal of Nature. A team of amazing scientists from the University of Rochester, New York have discovered that acupuncture triggers an incredible 24-fold increase in neurotransmitter adenosine at the punctured area!

This is big news because it sheds more light the mechanisms of how acupuncture actually works. If you want to learn more about this incredible discovery, check out the Scientific American podcast on the subject or read the article in the latest issue of Nature Neuroscience.

More details in Nature Neuroscience.

Update: there was substantial media coverage of this study, including scientific journals like Scientific American and mainstream media including the New Zealand Herald. I’ve inserted a scanned image of the story in the NZ Herald forwarded to me by one of my colleagues. So go ahead, give it a read and share with your friends!