Arbarello (Sapienza): “Validity of acupuncture is no longer in question”

“The validity of Chinese acupuncture, throughout the world, is no longer questioned. Suffice it to say that, in 2015, Professor Tu Yu Yu, of the Traditional Chinese Academy of Beijing, received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for having optimized a fluid extract of an ancient herbal preparation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for the treatment of malaria. A further confirmation and step forward in the understanding of acupuncture-TCM emerges from research in the field of neuroscience applied to acupuncture, where it is demonstrated that brain plasticity, adaptation to pathology and allostasis”, the ability to maintain the stability of physiological systems in change, “following transcranial magnetic stimulation are also promoted by the millenary traditional Chinese acupuncture”. Paolo Arbarello, director of the department and professor of Forensic Medicine at La Sapienza University in Rome, told Adnkronos, recalling that recently 8 authoritative acupuncture schools throughout Italy have promoted a weekend training course – the last one is scheduled for September 28-29 in Rome – which enables doctors to carry out effective treatments for pain.

Thanks to the commitment of the professor, who for twenty years has been dealing with medical-legal aspects of acupuncture and professional liability supporting the validity and usefulness of TCM, in integration with modern medicine, an agreement has been activated with the Paracelsus Institute of Rome to give life to a Master in Acupuncture at the Sapienza University of Rome which, given the success recorded among doctors, will soon start also at the University of Tor Vergata.

“The second issue that escapes the attention of the general public a little – continues Arbarello – is that traditional Chinese medicine also has a preventive function that has been highly appreciated for millennia in China and could provide a further very useful tool for saving on Western health costs, which are now rising terribly”. Furthermore, “in 1982 a ruling by the Court of Cassation declared the practice of acupuncture-TCM a medical act. The federations of medical associations have taken note of this later. The State-Regions Conference has also confirmed its role, giving it the dignity of a system of diagnosis, treatment and prevention”. The peculiarity “of combining all the experience and technology of Western medicine with traditional Chinese medicine has an enormous cultural value – explains Arbarello – All the traditions of medicine applied to human therapies that come from millennia, from various cultures, in particular the Chinese one, have their own intrinsic validity, otherwise they would not have been applied for thousands of years. There is a very important integration between the principles of Western and Eastern medicine. The principles of TCM, as demonstrated by the masters we have activated, also respond to an extremely growing demand, in Western countries, for TCM services”. In particular, “for chronic abdominal pathologies – he concludes – there is a perfect integration between the two medicines: the diagnosis is made on the basis of traditional medicine criteria, the therapy is addressed, with great success, with acupuncture”.