The effectiveness of acupuncture both as a stand-alone treatment and in conjunction with other forms of treatment, such as that prescribed, for example, by Western Medicine, is continually being assessed. More and more information about this is now being collated and becoming available.
Acupuncture has been in existence for thousands of years, which in itself can be regarded as a measure of its efficacy, though access to the records of other cultures and in other languages can obviously be problematic.
Currently, however, and with the advent of the internet, there is a wealth of information easily accessible from around the world: Within the UK, the British Acupuncture Council (BAcC) has a dedicated research sector involved in the acquisition and presentation of the evidence for the effectiveness of acupuncture.
The BAcC also produces a growing collection of fact sheets on different conditions. Each of these gives the related Western Medicine information about an illness alongside the outcome of studies into the use of acupuncture to treat it, as well as a description of the ways in which acupuncture can be beneficial. Links to some of these are given below:
