Acupuncture
Acupuncture is one of the oldest, most commonly used medical procedures in the world, originating in China more than 4,000 years ago.
If you are a bit nervous about trying out an Acupuncture session, don’t worry…you are not alone. Since Western medicine uses needles in a different (and sometimes painful) way, it is natural for us imagine the pain of becoming a human pin-cushion.
In Western medicine, needles are used to inject medicine or to withdraw fluids from the body. The needles are hollow and the tip is beveled and sharpened so that it can cut the skin upon entry. In comparison to Acupuncture needles, Western needles are huge because the diameter needs to be large enough to transfer the thick fluids of the body. You can put many acupuncture needles inside the hole of a Western needle.
Acupuncture needles are very thin and solid. They are not designed to cut the skin, but to displace the skin and stimulate areas beneath the skin.
Acupuncture uses very fine needles to stimulate points along the acupuncture meridians. Acupuncture needles range from 1/4 inch to several inches in length and a few thousandths to several thousandths of an inch in diameter. One inch and 1.5 inch are the most commonly used lengths of needle. The others are reserved for more specialized use. The vast majority of needles used in the US are stainless steel but copper, gold and silver are still in use. Gold is thought by some to tonify and silver to disperse Qi.
When the needle is inserted the patient may feel nothing or a sensation akin to a mosquito bite, or perhaps a fly bite. Any pain should subside within a few seconds after insertion. Sensation after needles insertion varies widely.
You may feel nothing. You may feel a heaviness either around the needle or your whole body. It may seem like there is electricity at the needle or coursing through the channel. Yet another sensation is the feel of water moving through a hose. All of these sensations are held to be the experience of Qi. If the sensation is burning or sharp and/or continuous the needle should be adjusted. According to the Nei Jing the practitioner feels “a fish taking a hook”.
The experience while the needles are in (usually 20 – 40 minutes) depends upon the nature of the imbalance of the flow of energy. Sometimes the patient relaxes profoundly, sometimes he/she feels energized. Many times patients will go to sleep. Other times the patient enters a meditative state. The kinds of experience can vary widely during the course of treatment.
It is important to understand that Acupuncture (and Traditional Chinese Medicine in general), is not “folk medicine”. It is a highly developed, systematic, recorded, researched, and peer reviewed form of medicine with several disciplines that continues to evolve. It has a massive amount of real-world data to justify the application of techniques based on several thousand years of human trials.
Throughout the world, lay-persons have adopted the techniques far more readily that scientists because they do not have to understand how it works to take advantage of it but the word is out… it’s cheap, it’s mostly painless, and most importantly… it works.
There are mountains of anecdotal evidence that Acupuncture and Acupressure is effective on various different types of illness. But despite many efforts, Western science has never been able to reconcile how Acupuncture works. They can prove “that” it works, but not “how” it works…so many doctors an researchers remain skeptic. Since Acupuncture is based on oriental theories like “yin” and “yang” and “the five elements”, a Chinese diagnosis may seem strange and unprofessional to Western physicians in the same way Western medicine can, by prescribing potent pharmaceuticals to a patient they meet for ten minutes, look unprofessional to an Asian medical practitioner.
The Chinese have less problem understanding how Acupuncture works because their culture, philosophy, and even their language makes explanations of “vital energy” or “Qi” within the body plausible, and for the most part, unquestioned. For the Chinese, “Qi” is no more mysterious than electricity. Like electricity, Qi is invisible. Although you cannot see an electric current, its presence can be detected through heat, magnetic effects and so on. Analogously, abnormal Qi variations can be detected by symptoms, such as heat, redness, diarrhea (too much Qi), or coldness, whiteness, constipation (too little Qi). Qi is balanced by eliminating these symptoms. Anything that helps “move” this vital energy when it is stagnant will help bring the body back into balance or homeostasis, thus allowing it to heal.
In Chinese Medicine, these meridians are where the energy, Qi, is said to flow. Illnesses and dysfunction are due to blockages and imbalances in the flow of this Qi. Acupuncture needles release these blockages.
From a Western biomedical perspective, stimulating the acupuncture points has an effect on the body’s neurotransmitters and hormones, thereby allowing the body to repair itself and restore the body to its natural state.