hankyoreh

Acupuncture works in treating motor disorders caused by Parkinson's disease, a team of South Korean professors of Oriental medicine claimed Wednesday.

The team discovered that if the treatment is administered on the right side of patients' bodies with kinetic function disorders, it can help heal areas on the other side of their body.

The findings are "significant because acpuncture treatment can be employed as a preventive therapy for degenerative brain diseases, and it is also applicable to improving symptoms of Parkinson's patients," said Lim Sabina, a professor of Oriental medicine at Kyung Hee University who led the project.

The team was searching for "acupoints" on the bodies of Parkinson's patients first, then hoped to reveal how the treatment works after conducting brain mapping studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Lim said.

Acupuncture has traditionally been used as a form of healing in East Asian countries, including China, Korea and Japan. It works by piercing specific body parts with fine needles to relieve pain or produce a natural kind of local anaesthetic.
Seoul, Sept. 13 (Yonhap News)