The sports world was skeptical when New York Knicks shooting guard Allan Houston announced that he was receiving acupuncture treatments for an ankle injury. Then he started playing better, and doubt turned into a mixture of surprise and curiosity.

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Acupuncture anaesthesia is a recent and purely Chinese invention. The Thoughts of Chairman Mao state that 'Chinese medicine and pharmacology are a great treasure house and efforts should be made to explore them and raise them to a higher level.' This

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Acupuncture anaesthesia is widely used in China. It often provides the highlight to a 'tourist trip' and has been filmed for the Western media on many occasions. Acupuncture anaesthesia has been used in a wide variety of operations, from minor proced

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Acupuncture anaesthesia is widely used for Caesarean sections in China. A report recently published by the Chinese, discusses the results of 1,000 cases managed in this manner. The Chinese claim a 98 per cent success rate in the abolition of pain, a

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The correction of foetal malposition is achieved by applying moxibustion to an acupuncture point on the little toe. In about 60 per cent of women the foetus turns naturally prior to the thirty-fourth week of pregnancy; this can be increased to 90 per

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It is claimed that ear acupuncture helps about 40 per cent of people to give up smoking over a period of about six months. Again, it is essential to be well motivated before embarking on a course of treatment. Acupuncture does seem to decrease the de

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Some excellent research work has been done in this field, especially in Hong Kong. It is clear that acupuncture can help to solve the severe withdrawal symptoms experienced by those coming off hard drugs like heroin; however, withdrawal from drugs is

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Traditional Chinese medicine does not recognize raised blood pressure (hypertension) as a disease, and acupuncture treatment has therefore centered around the relief of the infrequent and vague symptoms associated with raised blood pressure, such a h

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Heart diseases can frequently cause an abnormal rhythm to the heart beat; this may manifest itself as palpitations, an irregular heart beat, or dropped beats. Acupuncture can correct a small number of these arrhythmias. In established atrial fibrilla

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Angina is a type of 'cramp' in the heart muscles, precipitated by a poor blood supply to the heart, and it usually exhibits itself as chest pain on exercise. Using sophisticated measuring equipment the Chinese have completed a variety of trials to as

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Bronchitis is a common lung disease, aggravated by cigarette smoke, industrial pollutants, and dust. It involves the irreparable destruction of lung tissue. There is often an asthmatic element in bronchitis as irritants such as smoke and dust cause t

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The wheeze of asthma is caused by contraction of the muscular walls of the small breathing tubes in the lung. The narrowed air tube creates a 'turbulent' air flow and therefore causes a wheeze, or whistle, when the asthmatic breathes. Because the t

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Diarrhea is a symptom that can be indicative of a variety of diseases; it may be caused by an infection (dysentry), an inflammatory process (colitis), stress or dietary indiscretion. Sometimes no clear cause can be found for irregular bowel habits an

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An ulcer is an area of raw tissue, rather like the tissue found under the scab of a healing cut. Ulcers can occur in the stomach and are usually found either in the stomach proper (gastric ulcers), or in the part of the intestine that drains food fro

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Indigestion is a symptom rather than a disease, and can be caused by a variety of factors such as over-indulgence, stress and acid regurgitation. It is important to investigate long standing indigestion so that the exact reasons for this symptom can

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It is difficult to be objective about the treatment of disorders such as anxiety and depression, as the problems themselves are difficult to assess objectively, and therefore no good clear figures are available about their treatment with acupuncture.

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The neuralgias are a collection of poorly understood and frequently painful conditions. The more common and clearly defined types of neuralgia will be discussed in the following section. Trigeminal neuralgia usually presents with severe unilateral f

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There are three major types of nerve destruction that cause paralysis. Children may be born with an incomplete nervous system, such as spina bifida, an accident may occur that destroys part of the nervous system, or a disease may be present causing d

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A stroke is caused by a disturbance of the blood supply to the brain. The blood vessels that normally supply blood to the brain can be compromised by becoming blocked or bleeding. This results in a deficient blood supply to the brain tissue and these

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Headaches can be due to a multitude of factors; arthritis of the neck, dental problems, sinusitis, stress and tension, and head injury are a few of the many causes. Headaches have been dealt with as a separate section because they are so common and t

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The effects of acupuncture on rheumatoid arthritis are not so clear cut. During the early, acute, inflammatory stage of rheumatoid arthritis there is some evidence to suggest that acupuncture might worsen the pain and therefore many acupuncturists do

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Osteoarthritis and the rheumatic pains that result from this type of joint damage, are quite a common problem. People frequently complain that their arthritic knee pain is worse in cold or damp weather and this demonstrates quite clearly the origin o

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Sudden injury or sprains usually respond well to acupuncture. The pain resulting from a sprained shoulder will often continue for some days or weeks after the initial injury. Once a clear diagnosis has been made acupuncture can usually be used to rel

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The muscles, bones and joints are usually called collectively the musculo-skeletal system. When disease or damage occurs to this system it nearly always results in pain, and most people use words such as rheumatism or arthritis to describe this type

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Scalp acupuncture is a modern acupuncture method. The Chinese attribute its development to Chiao Sun-Fa, a 35-year-old physician in North China, and it has been used in China since 1971. The principle of scalp acupuncture is very straightforward; the

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A variety of electrical appliances have been used by acupuncturists to measure and quantify the skin's electrical resistance and conductance over acupuncture points, and one of the most sophisticated, and seemingly useful, is the apparatus developed

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To everything, there is a season. Our physical and emotional health is no exception. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is nationally recognized during the month of December, is an example of how a change in seasons can affect our wellbeing. B

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It is almost certain that acupuncture has been known and used in the West since the seventeenth century, but the first recorded use of acupuncture was by Dr. Berlioz at the Paris medical School in 1810. He treated a young woman suffering from abdomin

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Acupuncture, or needle puncture, is a European term invented by Willem Ten Rhyne, a Dutch physician who visited Nagasaki in Japan in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Chinese describe acupuncture by the character 'Chen', which literally

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Near ly 28 million Americans experience migraine headaches each year. In one of the largest studies of its kind to date, a team of investigators in Italy examined the effectiveness of acupuncture versus a variety of pharmacological therapies in trea

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