John is 20 months out of treatments and thank God cancer free and doing great! His taste is completely back but he can live with that. What bothers him the most is the constant, chronic dry mouth. Just wondering if anyone has tried accupuncture and had success. I have a friend who goes for accupuncture treatments for a back issue. The guy who does it is from China and she swears by him. Happy New Year to everyone!

Wanda

As I posted earlier today in another thread, my prosthodontist does refer patients to a dentist who also does acupuncture for dry mouth following radiation TX. He said it was 50-50: half of the patients referred found some relief and increased saliva, the other half nada. While I was thinking about it, the cancer came back and after the surgery I have zero problems with dry mouth since when you cannot swallow at all, even the tiniest trickle of saliva builds up quickly in your mouth.
If I had my druthers, I'd have the dry mouth again even though I had to carry a water bottle everywhere all the time (my wife made me a nice holder with my Marine Corps Marathon patches on it for my water bottles) My understanding is that acupuncture either works right away or it doesn't for dry mouth. 20 months is great for cancer free -I'm happy for you and John
Charm

In the 5 years I've been on this site only a handful or so have posted that they tried acupuncture for DM and none to my knowledge said it helped on a long term basis.

Actually there were many discussions about this back in 2003 and the consensus was acupuncture was ineffective for dry mouth - Even acupuncturists stated so.

David & Gary

Thanks guys for the dose of reality. Guess, I've been spending too much time on NIH's CAM site instead of Quackwatch. For the record, I have never had acupuncture and never plan to. I try to keep an open mind on TX options but when you look at the "research results" NIH has posted, it does seem like a clear case of "fraud, waste and abuse" of our tax dollars.
Charm

Actually I posted an extensive comment, from Quackwatch, concerning the NIH CAM program in another topic.

http://oralcancersupport.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=127293#Post127293

My husband had experience with acupuncture.

We flew to Maryland one weekend to see a miltary doctor who is a radiation oncologist and also studied acupuncture. He saw private patients on the weekend. The visit was about 4 months after radiation was finished. We went to the doctor's office on Sat & Sun. The doctor placed needles in my husband's ear lobes and fingers. He told him that he should stay until he was able to spit. After about an hour, he was able to have a good spit! After that session, my husband had the best lunch he had in years. On Sunday, he did the same thing.

My husband thinks that it didn't work, because his saliva is not normal. But, it obviously improved a bit, and I think it is because of the the acupuncture.

My husband recently had jaw surgery to remove about 1/3 of his jaw due to osteoradionecrosis. He also had a titanium plate implanted. Surprisingly, he has experienced increased saliva after the surgery. We hope that holds up.

My MO, as great as he is, wanted me to take colloidial silver for the mouth sores, I dould have ended up with grey tinged skin forever and the treatment value was dubious at best. It was a quack remedy from the 1800's (there is a section dedicated to that on quackwatch as well).
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/silverad.html

For some unknown reason, some peoples salivary glands make some recovery. Most persons who had IMRT will get much of their salivary function back in about 2 years, as I did. I have even regained some salivary function in the right parotid gland which was supposed to have been obliterated by the radiation.

Unfortunately, many quack remedies are promoted by MD's. For a detailed article on the efficacy of acupuncture see:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html