While the syndrome’s cause remains mysterious, researchers believe it is linked to a highly active sympathetic nervous system, part of the body’s internal controls that regulate several functions one cannot willingly manage, such as how wide one’s pupils dilate.

In the study, women with polycystic ovarian syndrome were separated into three groups: one group received regular electro-acupuncture, in which weak electric current is sent through the needles; another group was given heart-rate monitors and told to exercise three or more times per week; the last group was given no additional treatment or instructions. After a four-month period, women in the acupuncture and exercise groups ended up with lower sympathetic nervous system activity, though the acupuncture group received additional benefits, the researchers found.

“Those who received acupuncture found that their menstruation became more normal. We could also see that their levels of testosterone became significantly lower, and this is an important observation, since elevated testosterone levels are closely connected with the increased activity in the sympathetic nervous system of women,” study author Elisabet Stener-Victorin, an associate professor who has led the research at the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said in a news release issued by the institution.

Pain is a feeling triggered in the nervous system. It may be sharp or dull, off-and-on or steady, localized or all over. Although pain usually goes away once the underlying problem is removed, it can last for weeks, months, or even years.

To relieve their pain, many people take over-the-counter medications including aspirin, naproxen, and ibuprofen. Stronger medications, including NSAIDs in higher dosages and narcotics, are available only by prescription.

People may also try non-drug approaches to help relieve their pain, including physical and occupational therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, self-care techniques, and complementary and alternative therapies, such as spinal manipulation or acupuncture.

From the Chinese medicine perspective, pain is caused by two energy imbalances. One is the blockage of energy channels. Energy or qi needs to flow smoothly to maintain normal function of body and mind. Wherever there is blockage of energy channels, there will be pain existing in the area. In other words, when energy is stagnated in the area, it causes pain.

The factors that are involved in causing the blockage of energy channels (also called meridians) include physical trauma, emotional distress, and excessive pathogenic energy from the environment, such as heat, cold, and dampness. Insect bites and excessive alcohol intake contribute to the problem as well. This type of pain is usually acute, severe, or intermittent, and it is migrating or fixed.

The other type of pain is principally caused by a deficient amount of energy moving in the body or body aches due to lack of nutrition supplied through good circulation. This type of pain is normally dull, chronic, and consistent and is in a fixed location. Very often, people have pain caused by both of above conditions.

Acupuncture treatment is often used after the evaluation of energy channels and determining the types of energy imbalances that are present.

Acupuncture needles can always be placed at areas of tenderness, called Ashi points. In addition, a combination of acupuncture points should be selected to address the energy imbalance in the related meridians. For example, for a middle-aged man with chronic lower back pain caused by deficient qi in the kidney and bladder meridians, some points on the kidney and bladder meridians will be selected.

Also, the points in the spleen and stomach meridians may be chosen because they are supportive of kidney and bladder energy. There are a couple of points on the back of hands that are very useful for back pain.

After the points are selected, the techniques of inserting and manipulating the needle may differ based on the whether the energy is blocked or deficient. For example, if energy is blocked, a needle should be inserted against the direction of the energy flow and twisted counterclockwise. If energy is deficient, the needle is inserted to the direction of the energy flow and twisted clockwise.

Traditionally, people receive acupuncture on a daily basis targeting certain conditions. In the United States, people receive treatments once or twice a week due to financial and time constraints. People need to have persistent courses of treatment in order to fully benefit.

Acupuncture is being studied for its efficacy in alleviating many kinds of pain. There are promising findings in some conditions, such as chronic low-back pain and osteoarthritis of the knee. The problem with research is that it often fails to make accurate evaluation of energy imbalances of each patient, and it does not treat frequently and persistently enough to demonstrate its effectiveness is greater than placebo needling.

In animal studies, acupuncture seems to be able to stimulate the production of endorphins and regulate neurotransmitters. Neurophysiologic studies in humans indicate that acupuncture can reduce the electrical activity in the area of brain involved in the perception of pain. However, none of these findings can explain the dramatic and rapid reduction of pain.

Acupuncture is generally considered safe when performed by an experienced practitioner using sterile needles. Relatively few complications from acupuncture have been reported. Serious adverse events related to acupuncture are rare, but include infections and punctured organs.

Additionally, there are fewer adverse effects associated with acupuncture than with many standard drug treatments (such as anti-inflammatory medication and steroid injections) used to manage painful musculoskeletal conditions like fibromyalgia, myofascial pain, osteoarthritis, and tennis elbow.

 The study showed that acupuncture increases the binding availability of mu-opioid receptors in regions of the brain that process and weaken pain signals — specifically the cingulate, insula, caudate, thalamus and amygdala. By directly stimulating these chemicals, acupuncture can affect the brain’s long-term ability to regulate pain, the study found.

A report on the findings is in the September issue of NeuroImage.

Using positron emission tomography scans of the brain, the researchers examined 20 women with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. The women took no new medications for their pain during the study period.

“The increased binding availability of these receptors was associated with reductions in pain,” Richard Harris, a researcher at the University of Michigan’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center and a research assistant professor of anesthesiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in a news release from the university.

What’s more, Harris said, the findings could prompt doctors to use morphine and other opioid drugs with greater pain-killing effectiveness after treatment with acupuncture because those drugs bind to the same receptors.

Acupuncture has been used in China for more than 2,000 years. Practitioners insert sharp, thin needles into the body at specific points. Today, people worldwide turn to acupuncture for relief from pain, allergies, respiratory ailments, gastrointestinal disorders and gynecological problems.

Chinese healers claim that acupuncture and traditional remedies work by altering the flow of the body’s energy. Practitioners of Western medicine, which follows a more scientific approach, have been investigating exactly how acupuncture works — or may not work — for a number of years.

Details were presented to the prestigious North American Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine by Professor Suzanne McDonough, Dr Siobhan McCann and Ms Ruth Hunter from the Schools of Health Sciences and Psychology at Ulster.

They said small acupuncture needles in the ear are potentially a very cost effective and innovative approach that could be easily combined with other treatments such as exercise.

Professor McDonough said: “The main findings from this study are that a combined approach - acupuncture and supervised exercise classes - improves the management of low back pain more than exercise classes alone.

“These results are very timely, given the recent publication of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines.

“NICE is recommending a course of acupuncture or supervised exercise classes (as tested in the Ulster trial) for people with low back pain.  However, more work needs to be done on how these treatments might be combined in large scale studies in an NHS setting.”

Dr McCann said the results produced evidence of well-being effects generally.

“The participants reported that the programme had a range of psychological as well as physical benefits and the treatment had, for many, a huge impact on their quality of life.”

The conference organisers received more than 1,000 research submissions. Of those selected for delivery, just 12% came from outside North America.

In their presentations, Professor McDonough and Miss Ruth Hunter, who is a PhD student, discussed how the project was developed and its key research findings, while Dr Siobhan McCann focused on the participants’ experiences of receiving acupuncture and exercise.  

Auricular acupuncture is commonly used in the treatment of people with substance misuse to reduce cravings and other withdrawal symptoms. A recent and largely untested development has been the use of needles in the ear for treating painful conditions.

It is considered a microsystem of acupuncture and was developed in France after World War II by Dr Paul Nogier, who proposed that a relationship exists between different anatomic areas of the body and specific points on the ear.

The preliminary research study, which is part of an ongoing research programme at Ulster, was funded by the Public Health Agency for Northern Ireland through its Research and Development Office

However, it can have some side-effects including blood clots, uterine cancer and menopausal symptoms like vaginal dryness, leg cramps and hot flashes.

Doctors have traditionally treated hot flashes with anti-depressants but they have their own side-effects and have been shown to limit the effectiveness of Tamoxifen.

Now research has shown that acupuncture is an effective and safe alternative to anti-depressants.

Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese therapy dating as far back as the Stone Age, when primitive man would use pointed rocks to relieve pain and disease. These days, very fine needles are used and put in specific areas of the body to stimulate the flow of vital energy and restore the balance necessary for good health.

Eleanor Walker, M.D, from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit decided to undertake a double-blind clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture and traditional drugs to treat hot flashes.

One group of women were given a traditional drug and the other group of women were given acupuncture over a 12 week period. All of these women had reported a minimum of 14 hot flashes a week.

Both groups reported a significant improvement in the quality of their life following treatment and a reduction in menopausal symptoms, but the drug group experienced side-effects including headaches, difficulty sleeping, feeling sick, dizziness, high blood pressure and anxiety.

The acupuncture group reported no side-effects and even stated additional benefits such as increased energy and sexual desire. Feeling sexually attractive is very important to a survivor of breast cancer, who may not feel feminine after chemotherapy or surgery. This study shows that acupuncture could help women restore their sexual confidence.

Once the treatment program was finished, women in the drug group had a recurrence of hot flashes, two weeks after stopping the drug therapy.

Women who had had acupuncture, found its positive effect lasted as long as four months after the treatment was stopped.

Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center used a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner to view the brains of 20 women diagnosed with fibromyalgia who reported suffering nerve and muscle pain at least 50% of the time. The PET scans were conducted during each woman’s first acupuncture session and, a month later, her eighth.

In the regions of the brain that process and dampen pain signals — the amygdala, caudate, cingula, thalamus and insula — the PET scans showed an increase in the receptivity — and possibly the number — of brain cells to which opioid substances bind. Study author Richard E. Harris said that suggests that acupuncture appears to make the body more responsive to opioid painkillers.

But the mainstay of traditional Chinese medicine also appears to enhance the body’s ability to regulate pain naturally, Harris said. Many of the analgesic chemicals the body produces, including endorphins (the source of what endurance athletes call “the runner’s high”) and enkephalins (which act to tamp down the sensation of pain), also bind to the opioid receptors. So if acupuncture treatments enhance those chemicals’ ability to find a receptor to bind to, these natural painkillers work better as well.

Harris, a molecular and cell biologist at the University of Michigan and a licensed acupuncturist, said the group’s findings are consistent with research that has found patients treated with acupuncture before surgery often need less post-operative medication to manage their pain. The acupuncture in these cases may have the effect of sensitizing the brain’s opioid receptors to medication, making it work better.

The study may even support the controversial earlier finding that sham acupuncture works as well as real acupuncture to reduce pain, but that the two work in to reduce pain in different ways. In that experiment, patients seemed to gain considerable pain relief merely by a procedure that inserted needles into the body randomly, as oppose to following the paths of energy meridians that guide needle placement in acupuncture.

The random sinking of needles through the skin may prompt the body to increase its production of pain-dampening endorphins and enkephalins, Harris surmised. True acupuncture may work differently: Its painkilling effect may come not from boosting the supply of circulating natural analgesics, but by improving the ability of those chemicals to dock at a brain cell and exert their painkilling effects.

While many patients may turn to acupuncture as an alternative to conventional medication, Harris said his group’s study suggests that the two means of pain relief can complement each other.

“I don’t see them as mutually exclusive, and in some cases, they may work synergistically,” Harris said.

Mae “Hazel” Wansley, 64, Reading, a retired certified nursing assistant, struggled with walking for years because of chronic arthritis in her back.

But as a backseat passenger in a car that got rear-ended at a stoplight last August, she said her condition only became aggravated with neck strain and misaligned vertebrae.

“I couldn’t stand or sit or lie down for long periods,” said Wansley, who was prescribed medication, topical shots for pain and physical therapy by doctors. “I had trouble getting out of the bathtub. I’d wake up in the middle of the night crying in pain.”

By spring, Wansley was walking with a cane when she visited Eric Lisbin at the Acupuncture and Chiropractic Center, Shillington, in search of some type of relief short of surgery.

“I just didn’t want any cutting (surgery),” she said.

Opting for acupuncture and chiropractic treatments at the suggestion of her orthopedic doctor, Wansley said she was a little apprehensive because she didn’t know much about the treatments.

Her anxiety was eased when Lisbin put her through a series of scans or neuro-spinal screenings, once used for astronauts at the National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration, that pinpointed her painful areas. The scans generally matched earlier tests done by her orthopedic doctor.

“That gave me confidence,” she said. “After several more weeks of treatments, my muscles and nerves felt so relaxed. I was standing up and walking around without a cane.”

“There was a time that if someone told me, ‘Mae, I will give you a million dollars if you stand up straight,’ I would have lost the million,” Wansley said, proceeding to jog across the room to illustrate her improved condition.

After about six weeks, Wansley said she stopped seeing Lisbin for acupuncture and chiropractic treatments, which were covered by her insurance.

“I stopped going back, I felt so good,” Wansley said. “It was like I graduated.”

Alternative medicine includes treatments such as massage therapy, chiropractic visits, acupuncture and is gaining in popularity.

In many cases for example, people with backpain swear by a trip to the acupuncturist over taking standard drugs to ease their pain, not to mention the health benefits that come along with the treatment.

According to the government performed study, Americans are spending more money on alternative therapies than ever before.

In 2007, Americans spent a whopping 34 billion dollars on alternative therapy, and with more believing in the treatments everyday, this number will only increase.

“We are talking about a very wide range of health practices that range from promising and sensible to potentially harmful,” said Dr. Josephine Briggs, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Acupuncture is considered a safe medical treatment. For this reason, some physicians and practitioners suggest acupuncture as an adjunct therapy to other medical treatments. Acupuncture is sometimes used in combination with conventional painkillers, or to replace them.

In 1998, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a statement that said there is enough evidence to show that acupuncture had beneficial pain-relieving qualities in adults experiencing postoperative dental pain, as well as nausea from chemotherapy.

The NIH also found acupuncture useful in treating low back pain and many other conditions, such as headache, myofascial pain, fibromyalgia, sleep disturbances and depression.

In China, acupuncture is sometimes used for anesthesia. Chinese medicine is often used in combination with Western medical treatment, and many patients are needled in the same room at the same time.

This reduces the cost and increases the availability and frequency of Oriental Medicine choices in China.

Factors to be aware of when considering acupuncture in Wisconsin include safety, convenience and cost.

Here are some suggestions regarding acupuncture:

Ask your doctor if he supports your decision to try acupuncture. Many physicians understand the theories of acupuncture and know that it is a safe option.

Check on the acupuncturist’s background and qualifications. Check the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine website (www.nccaom.org/ find/index.html) for board-certified practitioners and your state government web site for licensure (https://ice.wi.gov/ LicenseLookup/individual.do). The Midwest College of Oriental Medicine (www.acupunc ture.edu) is another source of practitioner information.

Consider costs, benefits and convenience. It is advisable to ask about the success rates of acupuncture and the probability of achieving desired levels of relief. However, it is difficult to predict an individual’s response to acupuncture before treatment and comparison is not always accurate. Results obtained post treatment should be noted by the patient and shared with the practitioner.