Acupuncture has been around for a long time, ateast 5,000 years, infact the oldest known comprehensive text on the subject, the Yellow Emporer Classic, clearly indicates that it was already considered old all that time ago.
The acupuncture points (tsubos) are small areas of skin that have lower skin surface tension and higher electrical conductivity than the rest of your skin around and in between the points, it is an electro-magnetic phenomenon. It is anyone’s guess how this system of knowledge came into being although it is stated in the Yellow Emporer Classic that long ago people could actually see tsubos with the naked eye.
Acupuncture appears to assist circulation and although it is best known for it’s ability to relieve muscular pain it is also effective in treating gynaecological, digestive, respiratory and stress related problems too. More recently IVF clinics have started recommending acupuncture as an adjunct therapy for women trying to conceive and acupuncture is one of the few things that can be offered with confidence to pregnant women suffering morning sickness because of it’s lack of side effects.
Misunderstandings have occurred over the years between practitioners and academics of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) partly because of the terminology used. WM is expressed in Ancient Greek and Latin words where TCM is not. TCM uses more figurative language than WM and some Mandarin words do not neatly translate into English (nor Ancient Greek or Latin for that matter) which can also lead to misunderstandings. Both therapies work and are good for different things.
Another area of misunderstanding about acupuncture is that one does not need to believe in it for it to work, it is not a religion (and not in any way related to Voodoo!), acupuncture works just as well on animals as it does on people. The placebo affect is just as likely to work with other therapies (including WM) as it can with acupuncture.
The philosophy behind acupuncture can take some time to learn, there is more to it than knowing how to insert needles where it feels sore, the difference between short courses on acupuncture (certificate) and the longer courses (degree) mainly is due to how indepth the philosophy is addressed.
This does not mean that a doctor or physio therapist who perhaps has done a short course on acupuncture is going to use it unsafely, it is more a case that a person (such as myself) who specialises in it is more aware of different ways of using acupuncture to treat a wider variety of physical problems.
The use of sterile disposable needles has long been an industry standard which makes infection very rare if not completely non-existent and people having acupuncture for the first time are usually pleasantly surprised that it is not nearly as uncomfortable as they first thought it might be.
Acupuncturists pay low professional insurance premiums, you are at a very low risk of this therapy going wrong.