What Acupuncture & Herbal Medicine
Can Treat 

The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture for these diseases, symptoms or conditions, because acupuncture has been ‘prove[d] – through controlled trials – to be an effective treatment’:

• Adverse reactions to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy

• Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever)

• Biliary colic

• Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke)

• Dysentery, acute bacillary

• Dysmenorrhoea, primary

• Epigastralgia, acute (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm)

• Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)

• Headache

• Hypertension, essential

• Hypotension, primary

• Induction of labour

• Knee pain

• Leukopenia

• Low back pain

• Malposition of fetus, correction of

• Morning sickness

• Nausea and vomiting

• Neck pain

• Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and temporomandibular dysfunction)

• Periarthritis of shoulder

• Postoperative pain

• Renal colic

• Rheumatoid arthritis

• Sciatica

• Sprain

• Stroke

• Tennis elbow

Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture because its therapeutic effect has been shown.

• Abdominal pain (in acute gastroenteritis or due to gastrointestinal spasm)

• Acne vulgaris

• Alcohol dependence and detoxification

• Bell’s palsy

• Bronchial asthma

• Cancer pain

• Cardiac neurosis

• Cholecystitis, chronic, with acute exacerbation

• Cholelithiasis

• Competition stress syndrome

• Craniocerebral injury, closed

• Diabetes mellitus, non-insulin-dependent

• Earache

• Epidemic haemorrhagic fever

• Epistaxis, simple (without generalised or local disease)

• Eye pain due to subconjunctival injection

• Female infertility

• Facial spasm

• Female urethral syndrome

• Fibromyalgia and fasciitis

• Gastrokinetic disturbance

• Gouty arthritis

• Hepatitis B virus carrier status

• Herpes zoster (human (alpha) herpes virus 3)

• Hyperlipaemia

• Hypo-ovarianism

• Insomnia

• Labour pain

• Lactation, deficiency

• Male sexual dysfunction, non-organic

• Ménière disease

• Neuralgia, post-herpetic

• Neurodermatitis

• Obesity

• Opium, cocaine and heroin dependence

• Osteoarthritis

• Pain due to endoscopic examination

• Pain in thromboangiitis obliterans

• Polycystic ovary syndrome (Stein–Leventhal syndrome)

• Postextubation in children

• Postoperative convalescence

• Premenstrual syndrome

• Prostatitis, chronic

• Pruritus

• Radicular and pseudoradicular pain syndrome

• Raynaud syndrome, primary

• Recurrent lower urinary-tract infection

• Reflex sympathetic dystrophy

• Retention of urine, traumatic

• Schizophrenia

• Sialism, drug-induced

• Sjögren syndrome

• Sore throat (including tonsillitis)

• Spine pain, acute

• Stiff neck

• Temporomandibular joint dysfunction

• Tietze syndrome

• Tobacco dependence

• Tourette syndrome

• Ulcerative colitis, chronic

• Urolithiasis

• Vascular dementia

• Whooping cough (pertussis)

Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which only individual controlled trials report some therapeutic effects.  The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture for these when treatment by conventional and other therapies is difficult:

• Chloasma

• Choroidopathy, central serous

• Colour blindness

• Deafness

• Hypophrenia

• Irritable colon syndrome

• Neuropathic bladder due to spinal cord injury

• Pulmonary heart disease, chronic

• Small airway obstruction

 (2019, November 15). The World Health Organization recommends acupuncture for over 100 conditions - holistic health oxford: Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine in Oxford. Holistic Health Oxford | Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine in Oxford. https://holistic-health.org.uk/world-health-organisation-recommends-acupuncture-100-conditions/