While she still relies upon conventional western medications and surgery, Dr. Williams uses complementary alternative therapies to address chronic diseases that typically frustrate veterinarians. According to Dr. Williams, acupuncture may be used to treat arthritis, pain, nerve damage, and epilepsy, as well as liver disease, allergies, and kidney disease. But acupuncture is most commonly used in the West as a replacement for pain medications, which, over an extended period of time, can cause side effects and even worsen diseases such as arthritis. A 1985 study in the Journal Of Small Animal Practitioners showed that acupuncture was effective in treating 70 percent of cases of canine cervical disc disease, a painful and sometimes crippling illness. According to Dr. Williams, it falls asleep.
Animals seem to have no problem.
In her capacity as an acupuncturist, Dr. Williams primarily sees dogs, cats, and rabbits. She notes that the procedure works well on birds as well. A study on human beings using MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, a technique for generating three-dimensional images of the inner structure of the body, shows a distinct relationship between acupuncture points and parts of the brain related to the functioning of various parts of the body. Published in March 1998 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the study shows, for instance, that stimulating one point in the foot causes activity in a part of the brain involved in vision, lending some confirmation to a relationship suspected in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Despite published studies demonstrating acupuncture's effectiveness, especially its superiority to placebos in the reduction of pain, there are studies questioning its effectiveness as well.