Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been in use for thousands of years.
At your first evaluation, a practitioner will examine your tongue for clues like cracks and discolorations, take your pulse and ask numerous questions to determine what might be causing your symptoms.

The practitioner will then insert fine needles at specific points to unblock the flow of qi, or energy, in your body. Sound like hocus pocus?

Many Western doctors think not.

“Acupuncture is a system of correspondences,” said Vitaly Napadow, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, who conducts research on how acupuncture affects the brain. “Different ailments or diseases can be explained through traditional Chinese medical theory or through modern biomedical physiology, with sometimes interesting correspondence between the two,” said Dr. Napadow, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and is also a licensed acupuncturist.

“I’ve been practicing for eight years and have seen acupuncture help with surprisingly diverse issues, like plantar fasciitis and diabetic neuropathy,” he said. “Acupuncture affects many systems in the body, including parts of the brain that are involved with processing emotion and pain.” LESLEY ALDERMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/health/08patientbar.html?ref=health

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

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