Just a short update on my blog because of all the hysteria round the mexican or swine flu. A lot of people are wondering if this new flu can be prevented or cured with alternative medicine. Offcourse!!! some sites will say and they will sell you their expansive therapies. My spam-box was already full with all kinds of cures for the swine flu and only one cure for the mexican flu as it now is called in Europe.

Unfortunately little is known about this new flu. So what can we say about the effect of acupuncture on it? Very little indeed…

What we do know is that if your immune system is functioning properly, the change that you get any kind of flu is smaller. So let’s concentrate on how we can improver our immune system. We know that stress lowers our resistance, fatigue also. These are things that are easily treated with acupuncture. So we can do some prevention in the sense of general prevention that we use against your normal everyday flu.

In ancient China doctors would treat a regular flu with acupuncture and herbal medicine. Now this looks promising doesn’t it? Well even though I have had very good experiences with this in my own practice, there is not much scientifical proof on this. But still, there is also no proof that it doesn’t work, they just haven’t done any proper research on this.

So what would I recommend? If you are experiencing stress or fatigue, go to an approved acupuncturist! There is no assurance you will not be infected with the swine flu, but your immune system will be stronger. If you would happen to catch the swine flu, please do not fare blindly on alternative medicine alone. You can always use it as an extra, but please use the regular medicine first! They work a lot faster in these kind of cases.

Tags: acupuncture, swine flu