Acupuncture and What it is Thought to Help

Acupuncture, with a name derived from the Latin words for needle and prick, is a technique whereby needles are inserted and manipulated in various points on the body known as acupuncture points. The idea is that this will restore balance to the body including health, and acupuncture is often used to treat pain.

Believed to have originated in China acupuncture is associated with traditional Chinese medicine, but other types of acupuncture are practices including Japanese, Korean and classical Chinese. While traditional Western medicine practitioners disagree on whether or not acupuncture is truly effective or has a placebo effect, they generally agree that it is safe to administer when done properly. In fact the World Health Organization, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institute of Health and the American Medical Association all fall short of approving of acupuncture but do not disapprove of it.

In acupuncture the entire body is treated as a whole, with several systems that are often associated with various organs. The idea behind acupuncture is to treat patterns of disharmony in the body. Points to be treated may be in an entirely different part of the body than the symptoms they are supposed to cure. Some acupuncture practitioners, especially those in Japan, rely on palpation for tender points, known as ashi which stands for "ouch" or "that's it". The idea here is to balance the Yin, Yang and Chi to bring harmony to the body. One of the ideas behind acupuncture treatment is that the body contains meridians, 12 main meridians and eight extra meridians located on ashi points. Ten of these main meridians are named after body organs such as the heart and liver. The others are named after body functions such as heart protector. Those writing about acupuncture will capitalize the meridians to avoid confusion with the organs themselves.

An acupuncture therapist will generally decide which points of the body should be treated through observation of and questioning of the patient to make his or her diagnosis. While there are many methods of diagnosis used depending on the particular school of acupuncture, many of them use palpation of the muscles and the abdomen to determine a diagnosis and treat an ailment.