For Just a Little Money Down . . .

. . . you can get rid of that pain in the neck. There is nothing like a large sample size to support a point (no pun intended)!Yes, acupuncture really does have a point, study revealsBy Hannah Devlin from The Times OnlineA study has found that acupuncture not only helps to relieve pain but is a cost-effective way of doing so.More than 3,400 patients suffering from neck pain were studied over a three-month period by scientists based at the Berlin Institute of Social Medicine. About half received acupuncture in addition to routine care.The researchers, whose study is reported in the journal Pain, found that the extra cost of the acupuncture treatment resulted in health benefits that were great enough to make the treatment cost-effective.“Acupuncture isn’t controversial any more,” said Claudia...

The Woes of Research Grant Money

If one were to believe the bevy of solicitous e-mails, one would surmise that to get a grant, you just need to fill out a few pieces of paperwork and send it off to various organizations that some internet company provides you for the low cost of $59.99. For the past two years, we have been trying to get funding though the government to continue the research started by Dr. Hollifield and Nityamo Lian concerning an acupuncture treatment protocol for PTSD, and the going is rough and frustrating. We have applied for grants to "further research in several sites with several practitioners of each discipline is needed to confirm these results," but when the concerns on the part of the grant investigators are addressed and answered by our team, the investigators come up with additional concerns....

German Survey

Our Teutonic friends have been busy lately in collecting research covering a wide range of acupuncture effects and techniques. From one side of the pond to the other, a lot of great investigation is being done and I have included links to some of my favorites.Measurement of acupuncture needle grasp at acupuncture points and control pointshttp://www.akupunktur-aktuell.de/fb0112_1.htmOne of the most controversial aspects of acupuncture is whether the location of acupuncture needling sites is important, ie: does the needling of classically defined acupuncture points have an enhanced therapeutic effect as compared with the needling of any other set of points on the body. Resolving this issue is of fundamental importance, since the specificity of acupuncture points is implied in some of the most...