I know that a number of posters here have tried acupuncture for dry mouth, with mixed results. When I did a search of the forum using those terms, several threads popped up with both positive and negative comments. Gail Mac did mention that Johns Hopkins has been using this for awhile with H&N patients, apparently with some success.

Brian made a good observation in one of those posts -- he pointed out that some of the studies involving acupuncture have been done during the specific post-recovery period when the normal healing process would tend to show some improvement in saliva flow anyway. (One website I found concerning this procedure did not appear to include a "control" group, i.e., not receiving acupuncture, for comparison purposes, so it was questionable to me how they demonstrated that it was acupuncture that made a difference over a period of many months.)

As someone who had XRT 17 years ago (it was the only option then), and nothing of a preventive nature to save my salivary function, I've still gotten back a surprising amount of saliva flow over an extended period of time. I originally thought that that part of the healing process was as good as it would get after a couple of years, but I was wrong -- it has continued to improve over a much longer period of time, with some help from regular use of Salagen and Biotene. As I've said before -- I now wake up sometimes during the night to find that I'm drooling on the pillow!