Acupuncture is actually a gentle way to treat, despite the needles

Cheryl Truman of the Lexington Herald-Leader takes a look at acupuncture, an alternative form of medicine with practitioners across the state. "It's a really gentle form of medicine, even though there's needles," said Kathleen Fluhart, a nurse who first heard about acupuncture in the 1970s. "It just made sense."

There are 362 places on the body "where an acupuncturist can insert a needle to balance the flow of xi, or body energy, which in Chinese medicine flows in meridians throughout the body," Truman reports. Acupuncture can help treat sinus infections, allergies, fatigue and other side effects from chemotherapy and radiation treatments, tendinitis and plantar fascilitis.

Treatment centers like Houston's University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Boston's Dana Farber Institute both offer acupuncture treatment to cancer patients. "It's not a cure-all, but it is so amazing for certain things," said Elizabeth Armstrong, who practiced internal medicine for 17 years before becoming trained, and opening a practice in, acupuncture. (Read more)

Alternative medicine can help patients manage chronic pain

Patients can turn to health practices like meditation, massage, yoga and acupuncture rather than pills to help manage their chronic pain, says Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.

"Much of health care involves helping people find solutions for tough problems like pain," Briggs said in a release distributed by research-reporting news service Newswise. "I think all physicians are well aware of how difficult it is to manage chronic pain patients. For example, with back pain we see that large numbers of patients are turning to these approaches with the hope of decreasing discomfort, improving function and quality of life, and minimizing side effects of pharmacologic treatments."

A nationwide survey released in 2008 found about 38 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 and over and about 12 percent of children use some form of complementary and alternative medicine. Back pain is the most condition for which treatment is sought. These types of therapies are even being used in military health care. New military guidelines released by the Office of the Army Surgeon General include some alternative modalities for treating pain. (Read more)