Increasing awareness of acupuncture's many benefits is drawing many to this ancient healing practice.

If you're thinking about trying acupuncture, you're in good company. Not only has acupuncture been used as a mainstream therapy for thousands of years in China, but recently it has been attracting many Westerners, too. Millions of people in the United States alone have tried acupuncture to relieve pain that just won't quit. Many others have tried it as a way to avoid surgery or drugs -- and to avoid their nasty side effects.

All of this popularity means that acupuncture is getting less "alternative" by the day. Even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently acknowledged that acupuncture needles are no more "experimental" than surgical scalpels or hypodermic syringes. And the esteemed National Institutes of Health (NIH) declared that acupuncture may effectively relieve pain following dental surgery, as well as nausea and vomiting from surgery, cancer chemotherapy, or pregnancy. They even acknowledged that "the data in support of acupuncture are as strong as those for many accepted Western medical therapies."

For centuries, a few scattered doctors and textbook authors in Western countries knew that acupuncture might be useful for treating back pain. But nobody paid much attention until the early 1970s, when a couple of celebrities -- including the late President Richard Nixon -- visited China. Real credit goes to the late columnist (of The New York Times) James Reston's appendix, which happened to act up during his trip to Beijing. Though distressing at the time, this mishap prompted Reston to tell the Western world how acupuncture had helped relieve his post-operative pain.

In the years that followed, the West started waking up to the fact that acupuncture is only "alternative" for those stuck in a Western-focused framework. The fact is, acupuncture has been a conventional therapy in China for close to 3,000 years and is one of the main components of traditional Chinese medicine.

In China, acupuncture is routinely used to treat everything from flea bites to manic depression. It's used in 40 percent of all surgeries to boost other anesthesia. And the World Health Organization cites over 100 different health conditions that acupuncture can treat.