Is acupuncture effective

Yes - as long as you are totally honest about your symptoms to your doctor.

Acupuncture has been proven to be more effective than conventional lower Back pain treatments in a 2007 study.

A different opinion:

A skilled AP-ist does NOT need to know your symptoms. S/He will use pulse diagnostic, face-, tongue-, and other diagnostic methods to establish what is wrong. If the AP-ist needs to know your your symptoms s/he is NOT a classic therapeut and could be anything with no education.

Be sure your AP-ist is accredited with a recognized organisation as British Acupuncture Council or similar. A minimum of three years study is necessary in addition to a medical education.

A sure sign of not knowing what s/he is doing is the number of needles. FOUR needles is the MAXIMUM (or eight if symmetrical applied). The Yellow Emperor said: "The master uses ONE needle"

The international opinion among medical personnel who is up-to date is that AP works if correctly applied. But it is not a panacea, as many believe. The World Health Organization has a special department for AP!

A different opinion:

Please note that several sites provides anecdotal evidence to prove their remedy effective. In real medical science proper double-blinded results must be presented and similar results must be replicable by other researchers. Anecdotal evidence has a value = 0, and should be read with scepticism. Actually if you want acupuncture to work; ignorance helps. The less know about it, the more you will be ready to accept questionable facts. And if you strongly believe in any placebo, it works!

"The evidence as a whole suggests that the benefits of true acupuncture over sham acupuncture are almost clinically irrelevant," Eric Manheimer, MS

Acupuncture and moxibustion is an external therapy. By means of needling and moxibustion, it can stimulate the body and activate the regulating functions of the body to improve and rectify the disturbance and dysfunction of certain organs in the body. Such a therapy not only can treat disease, but also can prevent disease.