People Vote with their Dollars - Acupuncture Works!

New Study Reveals Number of Visits to Acupuncturists and Amount of Out-of-Pocket Spending Annually for Practitioner Visits and Self Care Such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong Up Significantly from Previous 2002 Study

According to a new study from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics, in 2007, adults in the United States spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on visits to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners and purchases of CAM products, classes, and materials for self-care. Nearly one-third of this out-of-pocket spending was to pay for CAM practitioner costs (see figure below.) Further, according to this government survey, the number of visits to acupuncturists rose 32% between 2002 and 2007. Also, nearly 12% of the out-of-pocket money was specifically spent on yoga, Tai chi and Qi gong for self-care (see figure below).

To read more about these significant findings on increase use of acupuncture, Tai chi, and Qi gong, please go to the link below, which provides access to the newly released National Health Statistics Reports (NHSR), (Number 18, July 30, 2009) as well as the earlier, NHSR (Number 12, December 10, 2008).

Link to the press release: http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2009/073009.htm

Acupuncture beats Western med for low back pain

http://www.naturalnews.com/026249.html

It's not enough to have a diagnosis... Give acupuncture a try, maybe that diagnosis is only a single-moment snapshot of where you are - it may not be permanent at all!

This article is hardly news to me! I see it every day - low back pain, and other muscle aches, are really hard for Western medicine... Even arthritis is often correctible with acupuncture, some exercises, and maybe some daily self-massage! I have even treated torn meniscus and herniated discs and had good results.

And people find all this "miraculous." I don't mind the enthusiasm one bit, but it strikes me that acupuncture and hands-on massage are very straightforward, no magic at all! The only reason it seems so wonderful is that Western medicine has left the hands-on so far behind that many folks who go to a doctor are never touched once... even those going in for surgery don't even get the basic "Does it hurt here or here?" examination. Instead they get a machine that takes a picture of a living changing organism - and the verdict is rendered by reading a machine's interpretation of the body!?!

And then based on such a fuzzy picture, the doctor recommends three things - surgery, meds, physical therapy... and marginalizes the hands-on therapy to only the things he writes down on a pad of paper! How can someone who hasn't even touched you prescribe manual therapy to someone else who isn't legally allowed to stray from the doctor's orders?

The way I work, I don't know in advance what I'm going to do. It's a combination of examining the patient, experience... and intuition! The results speak for themselves.

Great example of how to live!

Hey all! Check out the 88-year-old mayor of a major city in Canada...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY79KbCptTo