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The NHS doesn’t condone or fund faith healing, things like crystal healing or using magnets to heal patients. If you ask for a treatment where things don’t fit within the accepted NHS treatment plans, then you will be out of luck. That doesn’t seem to be the case with acupuncture, however.

The government doesn’t share how much the health service is spending on acupuncture every year, but the estimations are somewhere around £25m. The NHS rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says that doctors may prescribe acupuncture for chronic tension headaches and lower back pain. The NHS Choices website mentions there is reasonably good evidence about the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating a range of conditions, such as dental pain, headache, back pain, nausea after an operation as well as osteoarthritis of the knee. There are also plenty of patients who swear by the procedure.

Of all the types of alternative medicine or complementary, acupuncture has the most credibility among health officials and doctors. There are naysayers, however.

Scientific rationalists have been spending their lives debunking quack science, and now they have turned their sight on this ancient Chinese therapy. They couldn’t find any mechanism that explains how the needles ease pain or treat disease or any proof that it does that. Overall, there was no evidence that most of the conditions acupuncturists treat are affected, according to the rationalists. Though there is research showing there is mild effectiveness, the effect is weak, they say. In trials, some patients will benefit, while others won’t. When acupuncture is tested on thousands of patients, the average benefit was too small for someone to notice.

So, are the naysayers right?

The earliest known accounts of acupuncture being used appear in “The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine”, a text dating back to the second century B.C. where the principles of traditional Chinese medicine are laid out. Reports of acupuncture appeared in the western world in the 17th century, it grew in popularity much later during the 20th century. Modern acupuncturists have inherited that popularity largely due to the decisions of Mao Zedong, who promoted the use of Chinese traditional medicine during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. It was a way to boost the national identity of China and deliver cheaper healthcare at the same time. It spread around the world in 1972 thanks to the visit of President Nixon to China and has been more popular ever since.

In 2000, a survey done by the British Medical Association showed that half of the doctors in the country were prescribing acupuncture in the UK, either as a complementary treatment or as a direct treatment instead. Over 2000 years, more branches of acupuncture appeared, with most of them relying on the idea of the “life force” or “qi” that flows through the human body in 12 channels, called meridians. Pain and illness occur when the qi is blocked from flowing freely, either due to poor nutrition, infection, injury or stress. The insertion of fine needles into specific parts of the body - the acupuncture points - restores the body’s qi flow and helps the natural healing response.

Needles are just part of the procedure, however. Traditional acupuncturists do more than that - they inspect the face, body, condition of the tongue and more. The idea is that different parts of the tongue are linked to different organs and its condition shows their condition in turn. They also listen for unusual sounds, wheezing, and strange odours in the body. They check the patient’s heart for clues of health issues and the state of their organs and qi flow. It is a much more thorough and careful examination than most people realise.

Despite the naysayers, the benefits of acupuncture for pain relief and stress relief are still observed and very real.

©The Acupuncturists Ltd