As acupuncture has gained popularity and as we, as acupuncturists, have increasingly found ourselves working in conjunction with mainstream medicine, it has become more and more necessary to turn to research studies to demonstrate the mechanisms and efficacy of acupuncture as a therapy.  This is both a very exciting and a very challenging prospect, as there are many aspects to the practice of acupuncture that make studying it very different from studying the effects of pharmaceuticals, so the research has to be incredibly well-designed in order to evaluate the outcomes realistically.

There are a lot of very smart people who are devoting a lot of effort to this complicated endeavor, and this video from the Acupuncture Now Foundation has done an excellent job of presenting the basic elements of acupuncture research.  Crucial to understand is this: there is an increasingly large body of incredibly favorable research into the efficacy and mechanisms of acupuncture, and we are learning more all of the time.