Dr Natasha Kustura

Dr Natasha Kustura is an experienced and highly regarded Specialist General Practitioner and Medical Acupuncturist with special interest in women’s health. She utilises medical acupuncture as an adjunctive treatment for women with breast cancer treatment related side effects, as well as many other health conditions.

She was Education Chair of the Australian Medical Acupuncture College (AMAC) from 2015-2019 and is currently AMAC education officer, educator, mentor and examiner of the AMAC Course. She is also a Chair of the Joint Consultative Committee on Medical Acupuncture (JCCMA). She is devoted to providing ongoing medical education and training in acupuncture for medical doctors and dentists.

About medical acupuncture

Medical acupuncturists are medical doctors who have additional training in acupuncture and integrate acupuncture with current clinical treatment.

Either low-energy laser beam or needle acupuncture is applied to one or more places on the skin, known as acupuncture points. This produces certain neurological and chemical changes, hormones and neurotransmitters release and induce a physiological environment that helps the body to improve symptoms and heal.

According to current research, acupuncture helps with the side effects of cancer treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, and hormone therapy. The most common symptoms of cancer treatment usually include fatigue, dry mouth, insomnia, drowsiness, mood disturbance and pain.

There are obvious benefits to treating cancer symptom clusters with a single intervention of acupuncture treatment. This approach has the potential to reduce polypharmacy and drug interactions, decrease the risk of side effects, and reduce the overall cost of various other treatments that a patient may need otherwise.

There is growing evidence demonstrating that acupuncture is a safe, well tolerated, and cost-effective treatment in many clinical settings.

Dr. Kustura consults at the Melbourne Breast Unit, and always has available appointments for new patients. To make an appointment for a first consultation, or for any further information, please call the unit on (03) 9419 1166.