(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan revealed that acupuncture has even more benefits than previously thought for patients with breast cancer. In addition to reducing hot flashes better than drug therapy, acupuncture is effective at boosting the sex drive and overall sense of well-being in women undergoing intensive breast cancer treatment. Published in the Journal of Oncology, the study highlights the superiority of acupuncture in improving the quality of life for breast cancer patients without imposing negative side effects like drugs do. Dr. Eleanor Walker, lead author of the study and division director of breast services in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Henry Ford, confirmed this to be true when explaining the details of the study.

Two groups, one receiving acupuncture for their symptoms and the other receiving Venlafaxine drug therapy, were observed over a 12 week period. Initially, all the women experienced a 50 percent reduction in hot flashes and night sweats symptoms. At the end of the treatment period, however, the group that received Venlafaxine experienced an immediate increase in symptoms while the acupuncture group did not.

The purpose of the study was to focus on alternative treatments to Venlafaxine that would better alleviate the negative side effects of breast cancer treatment and ultimately encourage women to continue participating in it.

According to the National Cancer Institute, 13 percent of women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. Since conventional treatment is long and difficult, researchers hope to alleviate some of the associated misery with methods other than drug therapies that only make the situation more difficult.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Once again, another clinical study scientifically demonstrates the power of acupuncture to make real, measurable improvements in the health and lives of patients.

It's no surprise, of course: Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively for over five thousand years in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and literally hundreds of clinical trials conducted over the last twenty years have shown it to be remarkably safe and effective in treating a variety of health complaints from back pain to infertility.

Acupuncture works because the body reacts to stimulation with a healing response (well, that's only part of the reason acupuncture works, actually). A skilled acupuncture practitioner can initiate a healing response in the patient that no drug, no surgery and no medical intervention could ever accomplish.

That's what's really interesting about acupuncture: It doesn't do any healing. Rather, acupuncture stimulates the body to heal itself. This idea fails to be recognized at all in conventional medicine, which continues to follow the long-outmoded belief that the doctor heals the patient and that, astonishingly, the patient has no role in his or her own healing.

Practitioners of acupuncture knew thousands of years ago what many Western doctors still haven't figure out today: The patient is the healer. The doctor is merely an initiator of the patient's own self-healing ability.