Alternative Medicine Repertory

Auriculotherapy is a health care procedure in which stimulation of the auricle of the external ear is utilized to alleviate health conditions in other parts of the body...

Auriculotherapy -also known as auricular therapy (ear acupuncture) - is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a microsystem, meaning that the entire body is represented on the auricle (or auricula, or pinna - the outer portion of the ear) in a similar fashion to reflexology (zone therapy) and iridology (iridodiagnosis), and that the entire body can be treated by stimulation of the surface of the ear exclusively. In the 1950s, Dr. Paul Nogier noticed that a local healer (mme Barrin) in Lyon, France was treating sciatica by cauterizing an area of the ear, which prompted him to investigate the relationship between locations on the ear and human anatomy. Nogier said there was a somatotopic presentation of the inverted fetus in the ear, the anatomic regions of the fetus corresponding to specific zones of the ear. Nogier believed that pain in any part of the body could be relieved by either needling, cauterizing, massaging or electrically stimulating the region of the ear that corresponded with the anatomical area of the pain. Nogier called this process auriculotherapy. It has been used as a treatment for pain and used in combined therapies to treat substance abuse (NADA protocol)