The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-17-10
Today, Kevin explains how far the FDA will go to protect the profits of the precious drug companies and why red bull is banned in France and Demark.
Daily Finance Claims Alternative Medicine is Ineffective… “or Worse”
Over a Million UK Patients Addicted to Pain Killers
Government Workers Feel No Economic Pain
March Madness Membership Drive
Plus, the modern day Nostradamus and founder of The Trends Research Institute, Gerald Celente, stopped by to tell you how he was able to get out of Chile unharmed after the 8.8 earthquake hit the country and to give you his predictions for the next few years.
Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!
Click below to hear The Kevin Trudeau Show RIGHT NOW!!!
Daily Finance: Alternative Medicine is Ineffective…or Worse
February 23, 2010
Daily Finance
By Melly Alazraki
Disturbing news about alternative medicine has been in the air lately. Just the other day, and a few years too late, the Food and Drug Administration issued a stern warning about ear candling — the practice of using lit cone-shaped candles to supposedly draw earwax and impurities or toxins out of the ear canal, marketed for conditions ranging from hearing loss to cancer. Alas, the FDA says that ear candling is not only ineffective but can cause “serious injuries.”
The warning came just weeks after a liquid dietary supplement marketed as suitable for the “entire family,” providing nutrients to “maintain energy and sustain health,” had 200 times the concentration of selenium listed, causing a widespread outbreak of acute selenium poisoning that sickened 201 people. And then there was the Zicam warning last year: a homeopathic nasal-spray and gel cold remedy from Matrixx Initiatives (MTXX), recalled by the FDA after it apparently caused users to lose their sense of smell. Homeopathic remedies are regulated as over-the-counter drugs but aren’t subject to drugs’ safety and efficacy testing.
Poison on the Shelves
Doctors, scientists, and researchers have long warned that most “complementary and alternative medicines,” or CAM — acupuncture, homeopathy, dietary supplements, Ayuverda — are at best ineffective and at worst dangerous. Little scientific evidence suggests efficacy, and many studies backing them lack scientific merit. The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act weakened up the regulation of dietary supplements, permitting marketers to promote vitamins, minerals, herbs or botanicals, and amino acids without submitting proof of efficacy or safety to the FDA.
The result is potentially poisonous products on the market, say researchers in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Dietary supplements were considered safe unless proven otherwise by the FDA, through postmarket surveillance: a strategy the General Accounting Offices criticizes for being ineffective. And under the DSHE act, manufacturers of dietary supplements were not required to record or forward to the FDA any reports of illnesses that may have resulted from the use of their products.
In 2007, some 38% of U.S. adults and 12% of children used CAM in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Those 83 million adults spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on CAM: 1.5% of the total spent on U.S. heath care, and 11.2% of what was spent out-of-pocket. Despite evidence that they’re ineffective, such remedies constitute a growing category.
A Senator Backs Faith-Based Medicine
Britain’s House of Commons on Monday dealt a blow to CAM. “Homeopathic products perform no better than placebos,” said the Parliamentary committee’s report, which concludes: “To maintain patient trust, choice and safety, the Government should not endorse the use of placebo treatments, including homeopathy.”
In the face of the looming health-care reform, U.S. Senators have been trying to add various provisions to the bill: Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has tried to push insurance coverage for alternative medicines; and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has attached a provision that would cover Christian Science prayer treatments.
It’s unclear whether faith-based medicine has ever been clinically tested, but a spotcheck of the NCCAM Health page and its Office of Dietary Supplement fact sheet shows that many remedies have very limited health benefit, if any. WIth an industry whose products offer a greater risk of danger than a promise of benefit, and as the public keeps buying into these remedies, the U.S. should intervene not to support the trend of their growing use, as Harkin and Hatch would seem to support, but reducing our reliance on quackery.
Click here for the full report
Study Reveals Benefits of Acupuncture in Pregnancy
February 23th, 2010
The Wall Street Journal
By Shirley S. Wang
Acupuncture designed to treat depression appears to improve symptoms in pregnant women, suggesting it as an alternative to antidepressant medication during pregnancy, a study found.
The study, published Monday in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, is the largest to date examining the effectiveness of acupuncture to treat depression in pregnant women. It was funded by a grant from the government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. “Acupuncture that we have tested works for pregnant, depressed women,” said Rachel Manber, a study author and professor at Stanford University. However, “no single study is enough to make policy recommendations,” she said.
Depression in pregnancy is a risk factor for postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is associated in some studies with poorer cognitive and emotional development in children. Some have linked depression in pregnancy and low birth weight.
As many as 14% of pregnant women are thought to develop a significant depression at some point during their pregnancy, according to the study authors, comparable to numbers who suffer from postpartum depression. Antidepressants are generally considered safe for use in pregnancy, but research has been limited and concerns continue to grow, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. One study showed that the risk of persistent pulmonary hypertension, a potentially serious lung condition, is significantly greater in newborns whose mother took antidepressants later in pregnancy. The Food and Drug Administration recommends that patients and physicians “carefully consider and discuss together” the benefits and risks taking antidepressants during pregnancy.”Antidepressants are not an attractive option for many women,” said Dr. Manber. “Many women are concerned about using antidepressant medication during pregnancy.”
Acupuncture, based on ancient Chinese medicine, attempts to treat conditions by stimulating points on the body, most often with needles stuck in the skin and moved by hand or electrical stimulation, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
In the study, 150 clinically depressed pregnant women who weren’t previously taking antidepressants were randomly assigned to get either acupuncture for depression, acupuncture not specifically designed for depression, or massage for eight weeks. Those who got acupuncture targeting depression had a significantly greater decrease in depressive symptoms, compared with the other women. Some 63% of women in the acupuncture-for-depression group responded to treatment, compared with 44% in the other groups.
There wasn’t a difference between the groups in full recovery from the depression. Though this study didn’t compare acupuncture for depression with another active treatment, the response rates are comparable to those rates from other depression treatments in studies of non-pregnant individuals, Dr. Manber said. And future work needs to examine how acupuncture for depression compares with standard treatment like antidepressants or psychotherapy, as well as who responds to treatment and what the optimal dose of the acupuncture treatment should be.
Click here for the full report
Stop Period Pain With Accupuncture?
Febraury 22, 2010
BBC News
Researchers said there was “promising evidence” for acupuncture in treating cramps, but that more work was needed.
In the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, they noted two studies found little difference between real and sham acupuncture in treating pain.
Acupuncture is a less contentious form of complementary medicine than some, but its value is still disputed.
Period pain can be severe in some women and may be accompanied by nausea, diarrhoea, migraine and backache. Common treatments include pain killers, applying heat and exercise – although a recent study questioned the efficacy of the latter.
This latest review involved 27 studies – which included nearly 3,000 women. They addressed a variety of forms of acupuncture – from classical to acupoint injection.
Traditional acupuncturists insert needles in acupuncture points located along what they describe as “energy meridians” – a concept for which many scientists say there is no evidence. Sham acupuncture places needles away from these points.
It is not clear whether either form alleviates pain as a result of the placebo effect – the very ritual of undergoing acupuncture – or cause subtle changes in the nervous system and brain activity which can be beneficial.
Nice backs needles
The analysis by the team from Kyung Hee Medical Centre found that patients with severe period pain reported a greater reduction in their symptoms when using acupuncture compared with pharmacological treatments.
But they stressed there were methodological flaws in some studies, and that the findings did need to be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, there was “promising evidence”, they wrote.
In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has backed the use of acupuncture in the treatment of low back pain – a move welcomed by some but criticised by those who say there is little evidence for its efficacy.
The editor-in-chief of the BJOG, Professor Philip Steer, noted that some women had period pain, also known as primary dysmenorrhoea, so badly they were “unable to function normally”.
“Women with primary dysmenorrhoea should consult their GPs or gynaecologists on the best treatment available to them. Complementary therapies should not be used exclusively, at the expense of conventional treatment, unless significant improvements have been made and your doctor tells you otherwise.”
Click here for the full report
Traditional Chinese Medicine Coming to the Forefront
February5, 2010
Straight.com
By Charlie Smith
Vancouver library worker Todd Wong knows better than most that life occasionally delivers a rude surprise. In 1989, Wong came back from a trip to New York feeling rundown. At first, his doctor diagnosed a recurrent viral flu. Only after visiting an oncologist did Wong, then 29 years old, learn that he had a germ-cell tumour related to testicular cancer. It required emergency chemotherapy to deal with a growth in his chest the size of a large grapefruit.
“The first night I’m in the hospital, the doctor tells my parents, ‘There is a 60-percent chance your son will survive because we only discovered this very, very late,’ ” Wong told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “I was 29 years old, really active, and the doctors never suspected anything.”
Wong, a fifth-generation Chinese Canadian, was visited regularly by his mother, who wanted to give her son therapeutic touching to help him heal. She asked about doing energy work known as Reiki, because this is what she had practised at home. “The doctor told her, ‘If you want to do that, you can take your son out of the hospital,’ ” Wong recalled.
{sidebar title=’Healthy Living’}
Mixed martial arts a kick to get fighting fit
Cross-train your diet with good food as fuel
Professor Chris Shaw offers safety tips for Olympic protesters
B.C. Compassion Club provides more than pot
Pelvic-exam consent at issue in Canada
Traditional Chinese medicine enters the mainstream
Outdoor therapy in Arizona
{/sidebar}
His mother kept coming to the hospital every night to surreptitiously practise Reiki on her son, and Wong’s grandmother brought affirmations from a book by Louise Hay called You Can Heal Your Life. Later, he called a psychology instructor at Capilano College (now Capilano University) to learn how to practise visualization. When he was well enough to attend Simon Fraser University, every course he took had a focus on illness and health. “I did directed studies on the relationship between stress and illness,” Wong said. “I learned that psychoneuroimmunology [study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems] was only coined as a term in 1980.”
Two decades after Wong’s recovery, he sees much greater cooperation taking place between allopathic and complementary health practitioners. The B.C. Cancer Agency is backing a complementary medicine education and outcomes program, which is examining how to safely combine complementary approaches with traditional cancer treatments. The team, led by principal researcher and UBC nursing professor Lynda Balneaves, is exploring the most effective ways to support cancer patients in making decisions in this area. In addition, the researchers hope to enhance health professionals’ understanding of this area.
Meanwhile, the U.S.–based National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has been conducting scientific research on complementary and alternative healing practices for 10 years. It also trains researchers in this area and disseminates information to allopathic practitioners. For example, it has noted that acupuncture has demonstrable therapeutic benefits for low back pain, and that tai chi may benefit older adults with osteoarthritis in the knee.
During his recovery, Wong visited naturopath and acupuncturist Larry Chan, one of the founders of Integrative Healing Arts on Vancouver’s West Side, who helped him think “outside the box” about the origins of illness. Wong is convinced that health is about finding balance and looking at the body system in a holistic framework rather than focusing exclusively on germs or viruses. Integrative is one of several facilities—including the Broadway Wellness Centre, Cross Roads Clinics, and Finlandia Natural Pharmacy and Health Centre—that offer an interdisciplinary and complementary approach to health care.
Chan’s niece, Karen Lam, started working at Integrative as a receptionist in 1986. Some family members were horrified when she began studying traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the early 1990s. They demanded to know if Lam, a fifth-generation Vancouverite, was going to spend the rest of her life working in a herbal-medicine shop in Chinatown. “It’s only been in the last three years that I’ve shaken off that self-imposed doubt about what I do in the eyes of the medical profession,” she said during an interview in her office.
She describes acupuncture as “attuning the body to healing itself”, and said it shouldn’t be described as a “cure”. In addition to acupuncture, TCM also focuses on a proper diet, lifestyle, and herbal remedies to enhance the body’s capacity to heal itself. “I assess somebody by their posture, their demeanour, their expression, the light in their eyes, the colour of their skin, their hair—just their overall vitality,” Lam said, adding that she uses TCM in the areas of conception, fertility, and stress.
There’s no shortage of skeptics who are quick to pounce on alternative treatments. In their 2008 book Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial, complementary-health critics Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst reported that acupuncture burst into western consciousness after New York Times reporter James Reston received the treatment as an anesthetic in China in 1971. Reston later wrote a laudatory article about it in his newspaper. “The American physicians who visited China in the early 1970s were not accustomed to deception or political manipulation, so it took a couple of years before their naive zeal for acupuncture turned to doubt,” Singh and Ernst wrote. “Eventually, by the mid-1970s, it had become clear to many of them that the use of acupuncture as a surgical anesthetic in China had to be treated with skepticism.”
Wong, however, attributed his cancer recovery, in part, to his mother’s reliance on TCM. “We did it all on our own because there were no support programs back then,” he noted.
Acupuncture Increases Sex Drive Decreases Hot Flashes
January 28th, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
A recent study conducted by Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan revealed that acupuncture has even more benefits than previously thought for patients with breast cancer. In addition to reducing hot flashes better than drug therapy, acupuncture is effective at boosting the sex drive and overall sense of well-being in women undergoing intensive breast cancer treatment.
Published in the Journal of Oncology, the study highlights the superiority of acupuncture in improving the quality of life for breast cancer patients without imposing negative side effects like drugs do. Dr. Eleanor Walker, lead author of the study and division director of breast services in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford, confirmed this to be true when explaining the details of the study.
Two groups, one receiving acupuncture for their symptoms and the other receiving Venlafaxine drug therapy, were observed over a 12 week period. Initially, all the women experienced a 50 percent reduction in hot flash and night sweat symptoms. At the end of the treatment period, however, the group that received Venlafaxine experienced an immediate increase in symptoms while the acupuncture group did not.
The purpose of the study was to focus on alternative treatments to Venlafaxine that would better alleviate the negative side effects of breast cancer treatment and ultimately encourage women to continue participating in it.
According to the National Cancer Institute, 13 percent of women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. Since conventional treatment is long and difficult, researchers hope to alleviate some of the associated misery with methods other than drug therapies that only make the situation more difficult.
Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Once again, another clinical study scientifically demonstrates the power of acupuncture to make real, measurable improvements in the health and lives of patients.
It’s no surprise, of course: Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively for over five thousand years in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and literally hundreds of clinical trials conducted over the last twenty years have shown it to be remarkably safe and effective in treating a variety of health complaints from back pain to infertility.
Acupuncture works because the body reacts to stimulation with a healing response (well, that’s only part of the reason acupuncture works, actually). A skilled acupuncture practitioner can initiate a healing response in the patient that no drug, no surgery and no medical intervention could ever accomplish.
That’s what’s really interesting about acupuncture: It doesn’t do any healing. Rather, acupuncture stimulates the body to heal itself. This idea fails to be recognized at all in conventional medicine, which continues to follow the long-outmoded belief that the doctor heals the patient and that, astonishingly, the patient has no role in his or her own healing.
Practitioners of acupuncture knew thousands of years ago what many western doctors still haven’t figure out today:
The patient is the healer. The doctor is merely an initiator of the patient’s own self-healing ability.Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Once again, another clinical study scientifically demonstrates the power of acupuncture to make real, measurable improvements in the health and lives of patients.
It’s no surprise, of course: Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively for over five thousand years in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and literally hundreds of clinical trials conducted over the last twenty years have shown it to be remarkably safe and effective in treating a variety of health complaints from back pain to infertility.
Acupuncture works because the body reacts to stimulation with a healing response (well, that’s only part of the reason acupuncture works, actually). A skilled acupuncture practitioner can initiate a healing response in the patient that no drug, no surgery and no medical intervention could ever accomplish.
That’s what’s really interesting about acupuncture: It doesn’t do any healing. Rather, acupuncture stimulates the body to heal itself. This idea fails to be recognized at all in conventional medicine, which continues to follow the long-outmoded belief that the doctor heals the patient and that, astonishingly, the patient has no role in his or her own healing.
Practitioners of acupuncture knew thousands of years ago what many western doctors still haven’t figure out today: The patient is the healer. The doctor is merely an initiator of the patient’s own self-healing ability.
Click here for the full report
Electro-Accupuncture Relieving Knee Pain
January 22, 2010
Reuters
The study, published in the journal Pain, looked at the effects of electro-acupuncture among 40 adults with knee osteoarthritis — the common “wear-and-tear” form of arthritis in which the cartilage cushioning the joints breaks down.
Electro-acupuncture is similar to traditional acupuncture, where fine needles are inserted into specific points in the skin. What’s different is that the practitioner fits the needles with clips that are attached to a small device that delivers a continuous electrical impulse to stimulate the acupuncture point.
Among the patients in the current study, those who had a daily electro-acupuncture session for 10 consecutive days reported greater improvement in their pain compared with patients who received a “sham” version of the therapy.
Patients in that latter group received acupuncture, but the needles were inserted at random points on the skin rather than traditional acupuncture sites. And while the needles were attached to the electrical device, it was not actually turned on.
The findings suggest that true electro-acupuncture may offer at least short-term pain relief to knee arthritis sufferers, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Sadia Ahsin of the Army Medical College Rawalpindi in Pakistan.
Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi (“chee”), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi.
Modern research has suggested that acupuncture may help ease pain by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system, such as pain-killing endorphins.
In their study, Ahsin and colleagues found that electro-acupuncture appeared to raise patients’ blood levels of endorphins and lower their levels of the hormone cortisol, which tends to rise during physical or mental stress. So it’s possible that these changes explain the greater pain relief, according to the researchers.
Larger, longer-term studies are still needed to see whether electro-acupuncture can have lasting benefits — and to find out how often patients would need treatment to gain those benefits.
For now, Ahsin’s team writes, the current findings suggest that, for people who are interested in trying it, electro-acupuncture can be added to conventional treatment for knee arthritis.
Acupuncture and electro-acupuncture are generally regarded as low-risk therapies. Among patients in this study, there were no major side effects apart from bruising at the needle site in three patients, the researchers note.
Click here for the full report
Back Pain During Pregnancy Reduced With Acupuncture
November 25, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
The unique circulatory network that exists between the mother and her developing child is delicate, leading many prenatal health providers to shy away from prescribing any pharmacological methods of intervention to alleviate the lower back pain associated with pregnancy. Since drugs carry heavy side effects for both mother and child, researchers have continued to investigate safer, simpler, more natural methods of mitigation.
Dr. Shu-Ming Wang of the Yale School of medicine suggests that simple, inexpensive acupuncture treatments offer a drug-free method of easing common back and pelvic pain in pregnant women and may help stave off perpetual chronic back pain throughout their lives.
Three groups of women were included in the study; one group receiving real acupuncture, the second group receiving acupuncture in “sham” points, and the third group receiving nothing but self-care. Eighty-one percent of the women in the legitimate acupuncture group experienced a 30 percent or greater reduction in pain while only 59 percent in the phony acupuncture group experienced such results. Of the group receiving no treatment, 47 percent indicated reduction in pain.
After only one week, 37 percent of the women receiving genuine acupuncture treatment were pain free compared to 22 percent in the fake group and only 9 percent in the self-care control group. Those who received veritable acupuncture treatment also experienced a significant improvement in mobility and function compared to the other two groups.
Though not all women remained free of pain in the weeks following the study, researchers indicate that longer-term treatments may produce more sustained relief. Further study is also needed to verify characteristically why some women respond more favorably than others to acupuncture treatment.
Acupuncture continues to make inroads into mainstream medicine due to its veritable effects on reducing pain. Studies conducted on a wide cross-section of pain conditions have seen favorable results, leading the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to support acupuncture as a viable treatment option.
From fibromyalgia and chronic headaches to cramps and arthritis, alternative and complementary doctors are witnessing excellent results in prescribing this inexpensive treatment option for their patients’ ailments rather than pharmaceutical drugs.
Pregnant Women Turn To Alternative Medicine To Avoid Swine Flu
November 16, 2009
Chicago Tribune
By Dahleen Glanton
For months, Rachel Aguayo, who is pregnant with her first child, has been bombarded with messages urging her to be among the first in line for the H1N1 flu vaccine.
But the decision about whether to get the shot is particularly grueling for mothers-to-be, who must balance doctors’ orders against a natural inclination to avoid any medication or other substance that could jeopardize the health of their unborn child.
Many pregnant women get inoculated. But Aguayo, 26, made a personal and potentially risky choice when she ignored her midwife’s advice and opted for alternative, holistic ways to fend off the virus — acupuncture, yoga, healthy eating and what she calls “obsessive” hand-washing.
“I personally don’t feel comfortable with the vaccine,” said Aguayo. “Any decision I’m making with my body now isn’t just for me anymore.”
Health professionals have constantly warned pregnant women about the dangers they face if they contract the flu virus — premature labor, miscarriages, landing in the hospital and even death. Most doctors advise that inoculation is the only way to fully protect themselves and their children. Still, some are searching for alternatives.
Herbs, yoga and other holistic methods have long been used to help women conceive and to boost their immune system once they become pregnant. Now, with pregnant women among the high-risk groups for serious complications from the H1N1 virus, some are turning to those techniques in an attempt to protect themselves from the swine flu.
Dr. Chun-Su Yuan, director of the Tang Center for Herbal Medicine Research at the University of Chicago, said there is no clinical evidence proving that herbs and other holistic methods can ward off swine flu. It is possible, however, that some herbs may increase immune activity, he said.
“As a medical doctor, I would say the risks of the swine flu vaccine are much less than the benefits, so people should get the vaccine,” said Yuan. “But for people who have decided absolutely not to take the vaccine or if they are allergic to it, looking at herbs and other alternatives could be useful.”
Holistic workers said they have seen a spike in pregnant women who are seeking more natural ways to protect themselves during the pandemic. The vaccine is a particularly hard sell to pregnant women who had difficulty conceiving, according to Tami Quinn, owner of Pulling Down the Moon, a holistic health center in Chicago.
“These women are nervous about everything, every cough, every sneeze,” said Quinn. “They thought they would get married, move to the suburbs and have their baby, and nothing has been easy. Now with H1N1, they feel like, Why me?”
Quinn said she does not make recommendations to women, but she provides services to help them in whatever route they choose.
Medical doctors said there is nothing wrong with using such methods to boost the immune system, but they warn that it is dangerous to rely on holistic measures as the sole means of guarding against H1N1.
“We do see women who are apprehensive, but we tell them that the complications of getting sick are very dangerous and the best way to protect yourself is with the vaccine,” said Dr. Dayna Salasche, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Northwestern Specialists for Women, an affiliate of Northwestern Hospital. “We counsel them, but ultimately it is their decision.”
Click here for the full report
Infertility Issues? Turn to Acupuncture
November 12, 2009
NaturalNews
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Of all the available treatments for infertility, acupuncture isn’t one that people usually think of first. But as you’ll see here, it’s actually one of the safest and most effectiveness treatments for infertility known to modern science.
Why does it work so well? Because infertility isn’t usually a physical problem. It’s often an issue related to circulation or energy channels that govern the vitality of your body’s organs (including reproductive organs). Rebalancing those bioelectric channels can create enormous healing changes in the function of your reproductive organs.
And the best part? Acupuncture is non-invasive, surprisingly. The needles themselves are virtually painless and barely enter the skin. That’s a huge contrast to the highly invasive (and embarrassing) probing, inserting, extracting, injecting and poking around typically undertaken by conventional infertility clinics.
If you (or someone you know) suffers from infertility, you owe it to yourself to read the quotes that follow so you can educate yourself about the seemingly miraculous ability of acupuncture to treat (and cure) infertility.
Acupuncture treats infertility
A study found that auricular acupuncture was capable of producing results comparable to those of drug therapy in the treatment of infertility. I. Gerhard and F. Postneek, [Possibilities of Therapy by Ear Acupuncture in Female Sterility], Geburtshilfe Frauenheilke 48, no. 3 (March 1988): 165-71. A study examined the effects of moxibustion and acupuncture on 30 cases of infertility in women ranging from 24 to 37 years of age. Results showed that after just one course of treatment 9 women conceived, with another 8 conceiving after 2 courses of treatment.
- The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Natural Healing by Dr. Gary Null
In China, acupuncture has been used in the treatment of infertility for centuries. The first published account of this is seen in medical literature dating back to 11 A.D. The Chinese look at five principal organs – the liver, spleen, heart, lung, and kidney – and use acupuncture to release blockages from these systems so that energy or chi can move freely. This helps the body return to good health. Promoting fertility is one benefit that can be obtained. Acupuncture to kidney points releases psychological blocks that interfere with reproduction.
- Get Healthy Now with Gary Null: A Complete Guide to Prevention, Treatment and Healthy living by Gary Null
The women treated with acupuncture? Twenty-two pregnancies (and no side effects). Finally, a study at the Fertility Clinic Trianglen in Denmark concluded that “acupuncture … significantly improves the reproductive outcome of IVF (in vitro fertilization) and ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) compared to no acupuncture.” Best of all, acupuncture for infertility is truly a “whole person” treatment that looks at the woman as much more than just a dysfunctional reproductive system. “People come into my office and they’re completely unprepared for conception,” Lawrence told me.
- The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
In a preliminary trial, women who did not ovulate were treated with acupuncture 30 times over three months. Effectiveness was determined by a combination of measures indicating ovulation was returning to normal. Acupuncture treatment resulted in a marked improvement in 35% and slight improvement in 48% of trial participants. The beneficial results achieved with acupuncture may be due to alterations in the hormonal messages from the brain to the ovary. Auricular (ear) acupuncture has been studied in a preliminary trial and compared with standard hormone therapy for treatment of infertility.
