At school, 8-year-old Alex Karaszi couldn’t focus his attention and sit still. Soon, his grades began to suffer. At home, he had mood swings and threw tantrums. “I was grumpy at night,” the second-grader explained. The family doctor diagnosed mild to moderate attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed medication. Beata Karaszi, Alex’s mother, was reluctant, but went ahead at the urging of her husband and the boy’s teachers. She stopped it after a week. “He got horrible nightmares, became very sensitive, very emotional. It was horrible,” she said. Then she read about another option: acupuncture.

Acupuncture has been an integral part of Chinese medicine for more than 2,000 years. It is based on the theory that the body’s energy, called Qi (pronounced chee), flows freely when you are well, but can become blocked or weak. Inserting hair-thin needles into the skin at specific treatment points on the body can restore a healthy energy flow, practitioners say.

Read more via Parents say acupuncture has alleviated boy’s ADHD – Tampa Bay Times.

The latest issue of the journal Medical Acupuncture reveals that the United States Armed Forces is incorporating acupuncture, one of the oldest healing practices in the world, to assist in the medical care of its personnel.

First recorded in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon (黄帝内经), an ancient Chinese medical text written more than two millennia ago, acupuncture is a traditional Chinese method of encouraging the body to promote natural healing and to improve functioning by inserting needles and applying heat or electrical stimulation at very precise acupuncture points.

Before the 1990s, the U.S. military hardly used acupuncture in its treatment of military personnel. In 2001, however, Dr. Richard C. Niemtzow, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Acupuncture and Director of the USAF Acupuncture Center in Maryland, developed an acupuncture technique designed for military use.

Battlefield acupuncture (BFA), as it is called, …

Read more via Use Of Acupuncture By The U.S. Military To Treat Battlefield Injuries, PTSD.

Traditional Chinese medicine has long been used to ease pain and treat disease.

Now researchers have found it can also boost fertility if used in combination with fertility treatments.

A team led by Dr Shahar Levi-Ari from Tel Aviv University compared the success rates of couples using intrauterine insemination (IUI) both with and without Chinese herbal and acupuncture therapies.

IUI involves a laboratory procedure to separate fast moving sperm from more sluggish sperm.

The fast moving sperm are then placed into the woman’s womb close to the time of ovulation when the egg is released from the ovary in the middle of the monthly cycle.

The results, which have been published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine, show a significant increase in fertility when the therapies are administered side-by-side.

Read more via Traditional Chinese medicine ‘makes fertility treatments more effective’ | Mail Online.

The addition of acupuncture to best medical care for chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) may have a positive effect, according to a pilot study published online Dec. 5 in Acupuncture in Medicine.

Sven Schroeder, Ph.D., from the HanseMerkur Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine at the University Medical Center in Hamburg, Germany, and colleagues evaluated the therapeutic effect of acupuncture on CIPN by measuring the changes in nerve conduction studies. Six patients were treated with acupuncture for 10 weeks, along with best medical care, and five patients were given best medical care with no specific treatment for CIPN (control group).

The investigators found an improvement in the nerve conduction study after treatment in five of the six patients treated with acupuncture. In the control group, one patient showed improvement, one showed impairment, and three showed no difference in the nerve conduction study.

“The data suggest that acupuncture has a positive effect on CIPN as measured by objective parameters nerve conduction study,” the authors write. “This pilot study shows encouraging results for the application of acupuncture in CIPN, justifying a randomized controlled trial.

Read more via Acupuncture May Help Chemo-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy –Doctors Lounge.

An ancient therapy could prove effective at relieving a common side effect of cancer treatment, a small, new study shows.

Acupuncture was able to reduce dry mouth in people who were receiving radiation therapy to treat their head and neck cancers, reported researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center.

Dry mouth, also known as xerostomia, occurs when there is not enough saliva in the mouth.

Read more via Acupuncture Treats Dry Mouth In Cancer Patients, Study Shows.

Acupuncture helps reduce days with migraines and may have lasting effects, according to a new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In the study, almost 500 adults were treated with either traditional Chinese acupuncture or a sham treatment in which acupuncture needles were inserted in nonspecific points. The acupuncture treatment points were previously used to study migraine. Participants did not know which type of acupuncture treatment they were receiving during the four-week study.

Read more via Acupuncture May Be Effective for Migraines.

The general is surprisingly good at meditation. It’s not just the impeccable posture — that might be expected of a man long used to standing at attention. It’s his hands, which rest idly on his knees, and his combat boots, which remain planted firmly on the floor. Over the next several minutes, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Surgeon General of the Army, will keep his eyes closed and his face perfectly relaxed.

via Inside the Pentagons Alt-Medicine Mecca, Where the Generals Meditate | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Many patients suffering from chronic pain try alternative and complementary treatments as these are often viewed as natural and therefore risk-free.

Prof. Edzard Ernst (Exeter, UK) warned at the EFIC Congress ‘Pain in Europe VII’ that patients are being bombarded with misinformation on the subject but that in fact very few alternative pain treatments are supported by well-founded evidence. However, evidence was presented during the Congress that therapies, such as acupuncture, acupressure and aromatherapy are efficient in tackling pain.

Acupuncture after surgery: More than placebo

Acupuncture can work against acute pain, for instance after surgery. Findings of two review papers reveal that acupuncture applied at certain times following an operation actually achieves a moderate reduction in pain relief. According to Dr. Winfried Meissner (Jena, Germany):

Read more via Acupuncture, Acupressure And Aromatherapy Efficient In Tackling Pain.