Is Acupuncture 2000 a hyped wonder – or is it a serious alternative

Excerpt of an article from the Norwegian acupunctu-rist magazine ”De Qi”.

The editor and some acupuncturists took the course of John Boel, and I dare say, that everybody were amazed and happy to have attended it.

By Magnhild Bugge, editor.
I will admit, that it was with a great deal of scepticism, but with an open mind, that we met at a weekend course in Oslo (on the editors 40-year birthday).
John Boel had recently been mentioned in Norsk Ukeblad in an article, where a woman with an embolism in one eye regained her sight after only one treatment. Now he followed up on this with a course. The students comprised of a lot of alternative practitioners, physiotherapists, doctors and some former patients, who wanted to learn the method.
Our scepticism was a bit confirmed in the beginning, when he told his story about having found out about this by trying it out on himself, when he had lumbago, and then started telling about how he had been named ”Acupuncturist of the Century” in Sri Lanka.
But when he got started explaining his method and his experiences, and especially when he started treating patients, our scepticism turned to admiration and respect.
John Boel emphasizes, that he is a craftsman, not a theoretician. He is interested in results. He keeps exact statistics over what he does, to examine, which methods work best. And with his son, he has treated many patients, about 5000 eye-patients and 15.000 other patients during a little more than 20 years. All these patients would not have come, if it had not worked!

Reflex-zones in all joints

John Boel has a three-year education in Traditional Chinese Acupuncture from NIHAW (Tommy Iversen). He has also studied ear-acupuncture with Rafael Nogier, and ECIWO acupuncture with professor Yingqing Zhang. It was on this basis, that he started discovering, that there are very sensitive reflex-zones in the fissures around all the joints. These zones have connections with different parts of the brain. When the points are stimulated, a signal is simultaneously sent from the brain to the sick place, and a curing is starting up.
The theory is, that you can treat any joint on the body for any disease. John Boel has experienced, that some points work better for specific diseases.
The reflex-zones are situated around all joints and are related to the spinal cord.
– Many classic acupuncture points are situated in and around different joints, which can explain their effect. There are many examples of this.
Many of the participants at the course had brought some difficult patients with pain or eyediseases, in order to treat them.
John Boel treated at least five eye-patients, most of them suffering from the ”incurable” eye-disease ARMD (Macular Degeneration). The patients were tested on a sightboard, before the needles were inserted and straight after. Two of the patients experienced a remarkable im-provement. They went from hardly being able to see to being able to read the lower part of the sight board. The other patients also experienced improvements after just one treatment.
The other patients were suffering from pain. One had constant headaches and pressure in the head after a fall. Just after a needle had been inserted in a point over the joint of a finger, the patient felt a jab in the head, it became warm – and the pressure disappeared immediately. The lady reacted with disbelief and with crying.
Another patient suffering from pain had morphine tablets for a pain in the knee, which had been operated a lot of times. She had not taken any morphine this day, and described the pain as a 6 on a scale from 0 to 10. John Boel inserted a needle in the opposite knee, and the pain was half of what it was, and the woman looked relieved.
A known football player with a damaged ankle was treated Saturday and played a game Sunday after just one treatment

The Thor Heyerdahl of acupuncture

John Boel’s methods are not really accepted by doctors and TCM acupuncturists (classic acupuncturists), who with their respective background cannot accept, that it could be so simple.
I got the thought, that John Boel in a way is the Thor Heyerdahl of acupuncture. He thinks new thoughts on the basis of his knowledge and experience, and reaches untraditional theories and solutions, that are not immediately understood. We must be open and accept, that we cannot give a complete explanation why acupuncture works, indeed the doctors do not know why paracetamol works, but we know by experience, that it does.

JB: Thank you Magnhild, I am very proud to be compared to the great Norwegian explorer, Thor Heyerdahl. It was a great experience for my family and I to see his museum a few years ago in Oslo.

There are some comparisons between us, as he also went against the establishment and proved, that it was not always the ”experts”, who were right.