The Benefits of Medical Acupuncture

Welcome to the AAMA’s patient resource center. If you’ve come to this page, you’re likely looking for answers about whether or not acupuncture could help with your or a loved one’s health and well-being. We hope the information collected here will help you find the solutions you’re seeking. What is medical acupuncture? 

A growing number of physicians (MDs and DOs) are offering acupuncture as part of an integrative healthcare practice. When acupuncture is administered by qualified physicians, it’s called “medical acupuncture.” These physicians are trained in both modern medicine and acupuncture, which gives them the ability to examine a problem, make a diagnosis, and offer treatment options from both the modern medical and acupuncture standpoint. That means their patients get the best of both worlds: proven, ancient healing techniques and cutting-edge, modern medicine. 

What is the AAMA?
The AAMA is the only professional organization in the United States that represents the licensed physicians, MDs and DOs, who combine acupuncture and Western medicine in their practices. 

AAMA Mission: The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture is the professional organization of allopathic and osteopathic physicians that advances the evidence-based integration of the practice of medicine and acupuncture to serve our patients.

AAMA Vision: Raising standards and increasing access on the front lines of medicine … acupuncture that works.

Acupuncture: An Overview

  • Acupuncture: An Overview of the Scientific Evidence
    Research into acupuncture as a medical treatment has grown exponentially in the past 20 years, increasing at twice the rate of research into conventional biomedicine. Over this period, there have been over 13,000 studies conducted in 60 countries, including hundreds of meta-analyses summarizing the results of thousands of human and animal studies. A wide-variety of clinical areas have been studied, including pain, cancer, pregnancy, stroke, mood disorders, sleep disorders and inflammation, to name a few.
  • Benefits Of Acupuncture
    Harry Smith speaks with Dr. Roger Hartl about using acupuncture as an alternative to medication or surgery when dealing with back pain.
  • Medscape (Free registration to read)
    Does Acupuncture Work? 

Acupuncture in the News

Top Stories

  • AAMA Statement: Acupuncture: Evidence-based Approach to the Management of Chronic Back Pain
    With the recent concerns about the opioid crisis in the US, there is growing interest in integrating medical acupuncture and related techniques, such as acupressure, electroacupuncture, and laster acupuncture, in to conventional care. The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, the American College of Physicians, and other medical organizations have endorsed acupuncture as a front-line treatment for pain in general as well as, more specially, for chronic low back pain. 
  • Relationship of Training in Acupuncture to Physician Burnout
    As reported in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine: “Study data show an association between decreased physician depersonalization and acupuncture training, suggesting acupuncture training may be a helpful strategy to reduce family physicians’ depersonalization of patients.”
  • New Study Confirms why Doctors Abandon Conventional Practices for Integrative Medicine
    Groundbreaking research shows physicians practicing integrative medicine have improved quality of life and spend significantly more time with patients.
  • NCCAM Statistics on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use
    The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) is an annual study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), in which tens of thousands of Americans are interviewed about health- and illness-related experiences.

Acupuncture for Treatment of Headaches

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