Whenever people asked me if acupuncture was a good choice for diabetics, my answer was always ambiguous because I thought acupuncture was effective to alleviate the symptoms of diabetic peripheral neuropathy or nerve pain/tingling, but not the blood glucose level. Although some experimental studies in animals did show that acupuncture could reduce the blood glucose level, I always thought it was not convincing and that would not happen in human. However, my experience from a case that I treated recently might tell me that I was wrong.  

This patient was brought to me by his wife with a main complaint of sudden weight loss, lack of energy and pain in the back, neck. He had 20 years history of type II diabetes and need to inject insulin everyday now. According to my past experience, my treatment expectation was to get rid of his pain syndrome and balance his energy in a few sessions.  Before putting needles to him I noticed that he wore a blood glucose monitor. I therefore, out of curiosity, let him checked the reading, which was very high, 272mg/dL.  Then I started my acupuncture treatment; this acupuncture procedure consisted of two steps. In the first step, I put needles on his abdomen, legs and arms for about 25 minutes. After this had been done, I took out the needles and let him check his monitor, the reading was 259mg/dL. Although there was a little bit decrease of the glucose level, it was not that impressive. In the 2^nd step I put some needles in his upper, middle and low back. 25 minutes later, I took out all the needles and the treatment finished.  Even though I did not expect that there was a big change of blood glucose, I was just curious how much the reading would be.  To my surperise, the reading became 207mg/dL.  This was totally out of my imagination, i.e., a 65mg/dL (24%)decrease of blood glucose within just an hour in one treatment. Is that true?  I really want to see what would happen to this patient after several treatments. However, he had to go to Colorado that day and would not be come back for a while. I, therefore, could not do any follow-up treatment or observation on him. But, ever from that day, this case always mad me thought what happens after the needle was putting into the body?  I really hope there will be a double-blinded pilot study on human could be initiated in US.