On Acupuncture for Acupuncturists

According to a research team led by Dr. David Martin, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic, fibromyalgia patients who received acupuncture reported improvement in fatigue and anxiety, among other symptoms. Acupuncture was also well tolerated with minimal side effects, the researchers said in the June issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The study involved 50 fibromyalgia patients enrolled in a randomized, controlled trial to determine if acupuncture improved their symptoms. Twenty-five in the acupuncture group and 25 in the control group. In the acupuncture group, total fibromyalgia symptoms were significantly improved compared with the control group during the study period. Fatigue and anxiety were the most significantly improved symptoms during the follow-up period. "We found that acupuncture significantly improved symptoms of fibromyalgia. Symptomatic improvement was not restricted to pain relief and was most significant for fatigue and anxiety," the researchers conclud

Researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School found gardenia fruit blocks action of uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2). UCP2 is high in diabetics, it helps a cell's mitochondria convert food molecules into energy, but also inhibits pancreas cells from secreting insulin. We've been using gardenia (ZhiZi) for ages and never needed any confirmation it to be effective. They will obviously excrete and isolate the compound which inhibits UCP2 and make a huge profit selling the medicine. Nothing wrong with that. However, we do know that gardenia alone does not treat diabetes. We need a formula of a few herbs to achieve the best effect. When the chemicals form Chinese medicines are excreted and purified, the amount of that particular chemical has to be increased for it to be effective. This can lead to undesirable side-effects and adverse events. The research was published in the current issue of Cell Metabolism.