CRI听力:Science Proving Benefits of Acupuncture

Patients wait for treatment inside the acupuncture department of Beijing Guang'an Men Hospital.

One of them is student Liu Kun Yang who comes twice a week to treat his stomach ache.

It gives me a sense of relaxation. You know my study overburden me. This is a good way to release the pressure from my work and study.

The Chinese have used acupuncture for around 2,000 years. It's believed to help realign the flow of a person's energy, or 'qi'.

Yang Tao is an Associate Professor at Guang'an Men Hospital. She studied acupuncture for five years.

"Human organs, limbs, bones, muscles, blood, skin are all interconnected. So treating the outside of the body can help regulate how the inside works through adjusting the flow of energy."

It's this mysterious energy that's turned many in the west away from researching acupuncture. But this could be changing thanks to work by scientists like Ladan Eshkevari from Georgetown University in Washington DC. She uses acupuncture to help patients deal with pain. But found it had other benefits, too.

"But what they almost always said anecdotally to me was that they felt they could sleep better, they had a better sense of wellbeing and just a generalized better life expectations and the way that they felt about themselves as they were going through their day especially with regards to their energy level."

So Ladan designed an experiment to investigate further. She discovered acupuncture can reduce levels of a chemical linked to stress in lab rats.

"The significance is that now we actually have some scientific data at least, whereas before we really didn't have any, that we can now use to say ok, we may be able to translate this to the human model where we can say, ok, maybe this is the pathway by which acupuncture can exert its effect when you think about someone who has chronic stress."

Despite her findings, Ladan says many western scientists remain skeptical of alternative medicine.

"I have to be honest. There are some people who truthfully just don't believe in eastern medicine, don't think that there's necessarily any scientific merit to using eastern medicine. And the good news is we're proving them wrong."

Ladan now wants to translate her experiments to humans, with the hope of further understanding the secrets of acupuncture.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire.