Oprah and Acupuncture

I was amazed to see an acupuncture treatment performed on the Oprah show yesterday.  Dr. Oz, who is a frequent guest on the Oprah show and known for his straight talk on poop, brought an Acupuncturist with him to demonstrate, on Oprah herself, how the needles were inserted.

Dr. Oz explained, in simple terms, what acupuncture was and how it worked, and then said this:

"The reason I'm so excited and passionate about alternative medicine is … [because it is] the globalization of medicine."

Alternative medicines, Dr. Oz says, deal with the body's energy—something that traditional Western medicine generally does not. "We're beginning now to understand things that we know in our hearts are true but we could never measure," he says. "As we get better at understanding how little we know about the body, we begin to realize that the next big frontier … in medicine is energy medicine. It's not the mechanistic part of the joints moving. It's not the chemistry of our body. It's understanding for the first time how energy influences how we feel."

What?  A highly respected Western doctor promoting energy medicine on national television?!  The times they are a-changin'. Oprah even said that ten years ago she couldn't have found a doctor to come on the show and say that.  I did find it funny, though, that she described acupuncture as "something new," even after Dr. Oz mentioned that it was developed in China over 2000 years ago. 

I'm sure the skeptics are coming out of the woodwork, but it's time for Americans to open their eyes and see what other countries have known and practiced for ages.