Alternative medicine is more and more acceptable in the Western World, however, in the field of Acupuncture and TCM, there is no restricted discipline controlling the practitioners' ethics. Most of them are well trained, but some of them are not. Every practitioner is free to put any word she/he wants on the ads, so the ads in public media are multicolored. Some of the ads are trustworthy, while a few of them are exaggerated. There are such things like specialist, professor, master, director, best in town, #1 in the city etc., which are hardly proven. Actually, any practitioner can say himself/herself best or number one in town without authorization. Therefore, it is really difficult for the client to distinguish between the right practitioner and quack from the ads. As practitioner & professional, we give some tips to the clients as following:

• Your logical judgment is important, do not trust completely what the ads say. What health conditions is this tradition most and least helpful for?
• Check credentials. Find out where the practitioners were trained, whether they graduated, and what kind of work they have been doing since.
• Treatment result you get is more important, no matter what you are told, like “cure incurable diseases, guarantee, terrific testimonials and so on”.
• Asking advice of other professionals if your condition/feeling is still the same or worse after treatments.
• Be more careful when coming across “high percentage success rate” in the ads, or “ a big amount of money deposit for curing serious condition before treatments”, otherwise, you might be told after treatments, “you are only one exceptional case unfortunately”.
• Most importantly, remember you don't need to settle for the first practitioner you meet. You can change your mind anytime, and with any health professional, getting a second opinion should be considered.
• The efficacy of acupuncture treatment tremendously differs from one practitioner to another.
• Please remember that the better recommendation is "word-of-mouth".
• All the B.C. professionals registered in, or any complaint/comment to: the following official boby.