For many centuries, the Chinese have been using acupuncture to bring the body back to harmonious equilibrium. Employing tiny, thin needles of various lengths and inserting them into the skin at many different depths and specific pressure points, practitioners say that pathways within the body are opened up to relieve energy and get the body back into balance. Acupuncture has usually been used to reduce pain and distress, but as the practice becomes more popular in the West, conventional doctors are choosing it as a supplement to other methods in the treatment of different conditions and behavioral changes such as losing weight or stopping smoking.

For as long as there has been acupuncture, people have been struggling with addictive problems. So could acupuncture be used with success to treat these harmful habits? Can you stop smoking with acupuncture? The easy answer is yes. The hard part is actually doing it.

Tobacco use and its associated diseases are considered to be the reason for about 400,000 deaths in the United States each year and the estimated cost in medical care reaches over $150 billion dollars ($150,000,000,000!) annually. These statistics alone should prompt those that smoke to plan to stop. But smoking is a powerful habit and not so easy to eliminate. However, with the combined use of smoking cessation methods, you can stop smoking with acupuncture.

Using acupuncture as a complement to either prescribed or over-the-counter medications or techniques to stop smoking is like attacking the issue from all directions. While one manner can be treating the dependancy traditionally, acupuncture can reopen the channels and pathways in the body to allow for proper blood flow and energy to work on reducing cravings and lower the pain related to withdrawal symptoms, thus allowing one to stop smoking with acupuncture.

Most significant however, may not be the exact approach used to stop smoking, but the act of stopping itself. It's long been known that cigarette smoking is awful for you. There are about 4800 various chemical substances in cigarettes and - according to the Center for Disease Control - at the least 69 of these are known to be cancer causing. Besides these dangers to the smokers themselves, secondhand smoke, according to the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, accounts for up to 3000 deaths of non-smokers each year.

The method chosen to stop smoking is less important than the quitting itself. Whether one chooses to quit smoking with acupuncture, go "cold turkey" or use prescribed medication and attend support groups, the goal is to get tobacco out of your life..