So in this way, they may say to you, well, yes, you have rheumatoid arthritis but we're going to actually look at your energy balance and rebalance you, and as a result, your symptoms should disappear.

Um, is acupuncture essentially a form of preventative medicine? Traditionally it was very much, Um, in fact, traditionally, in China, people only used to pay the doctor while they were well and they used to go to their doctor fairly regularly on, you know, maybe four or five times a year, and they would only pay the doctor when they were kept well. And if they got sick, they didn't pay doctor.

And the doctor had various methods of which acupuncture was one, diet was another, exercise was another, er, of ensuring that the person lived a right life style and their emphasis was on if you're living a right life of style, if you're living in tune with the laws of the universe, going to sleep when it's dark, waking up when it's light, working, resting, doing all these things properly, then you won't get sick.

Unfortunately, our way of looking at life in the West is very different in that we tend to struggle on in spite of our headache and not take terribly much notice of our body when things are not quite right and we tend to struggle on until we fall over and we get carted off to hospitals in an ambulance.

And so acupuncture in the west, unfortunately, in a way, has come to be not the preventative medicine that it could be because we're not taking responsibility enough for ourselves in going along and making sure that we stay well.