2008 Sensationlism

Both Oprah and US News and World Report are talking about acupuncture (and CAM in general). What a boon to the profession!


From Oprah.com:

Oprah is ready to take a step toward the frontier of medicine…but she's a little scared of the whole needle part. Daniel was ready to ease her fears. "The needles that [Daniel] is going to use would actually fit through the hole in the needle that they use to take the blood from your arm," Dr. Oz says."Acupuncture treats any condition from allergies to, obviously, pain to gastrointestinal issues—a wide range of chronic diseases," Daniel says.Oprah doesn't suffer from those particular ailments, so Daniel recommends a wellness acupuncture treatment, which will help boost Oprah's immune system. This normally requires about 10 needles, he says, and the positive effects will be felt anywhere from 20 minutes to days afterwards."It's really not bad," Oprah says. "It's not as bad as getting your ears pierced, I'll tell you that."

http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200702/20070213/slide_20070213_350_201.jhtml


From US News and World Report:

Embracing Alternative Care
Top hospitals put unorthodox therapies into practice
By Avery Comarow

Posted January 9, 2008
"To be blunt, if my wife and I didn't think it was helping him, we wouldn't have continued with it," says Dan Polley. He's talking about Mikey, the Polleys' 2½-year-old in the next room, who was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia when he was 6 months old. Chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant have been crucial elements of Mikey's treatment. But the "it" his father speaks of is nothing like these aggressive, costly, and heavily researched exemplars of western care—it is a kind of touch therapy, from the camp of alternative medicine. Gentle and benign, "healing touch" is intended to rebalance the energy field that its practitioners believe surrounds the body and flows through it along defined pathways, affecting health when disrupted. Several times a week, therapist Lynne Morrison spends 20 minutes unblocking and smoothing Mikey's energy field, which energy healers like Morrison say they can feel and correct.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2008/01/09/embracing-alternative-care.html