Acupuncture - You’re Going to Stick Me with What?!
June 28, 2008 by Scott Goodman
Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese healing technique and acupressure have a great deal in common. Both these techniques use the energy paths in the body to make health possible by stimulating the flow of energy. It is brought down to a simplistic explanation of getting the Qi or Chi to flow without any blockage through the human body in order to maintain a state of good health. There are 365 points in the body that acupuncturists recognize and these are along the 14 meridians or energy paths.
Mapped energy or Chi is stimulated and released by inserting special needles at specific locations or through acupressure depending on the nature of the illness. This can be compared to a river blocked with debris. Removing the blocking debris allows the river to freely flow without obstruction. Acupuncture is also used to regulate the speed of the chi flow to optimum flow levels, when the chi energy flows too fast or too slow.
Acupuncture is a 4000 year old medical discipline, practiced and perfected over thousands of years. Archaeological digs have found acupuncture needles in the 1000 BC Shang Dynasty. The three types of acupuncture methods are the Five Elements method, Yin/Yang Theory and Medical or Western Acupuncture. Though the diagnostic approach used by all the three methods is similar, the causes attributed to the illness and the treatment of the illness varies from one method to the other.
The five elements acupuncture, being strictly based on Chinese medicine’s five element cycle, believes or assumes that a particular illness is most likely to be caused by either a physical cause or emotional stress. The inner stress has to be treated and eased in order to heal and alleviate the physical symptoms. As the emphasis in five elements is on treating the underlying cause of an illness, it can be a slow process reaching full recovery although it is possible. According to the Yin/Yang theory the overall balance of the Yin and Yang has to be maintained for good health. Simultaneous stimulation of more than one element is achieved by stimulating the different acupuncture points on different meridians together.
Western Acupuncture uses a combination of both Eastern and Western medical techniques, focusing on critical and vital short-term treatment. Among the two categories of medical benefits of Acupuncture, the first type, Anesthetic Acupuncture finds its place in surgeries and dental procedures. Symptomatic or “first aid” is the second sub category. This is used mainly for temporary analgesic pain relieving. Reputable medical research has found it to be effective in treating depression, allergies, asthma, arthritis, infertility, gynecological disorders, migraines and high blood pressure. However, similar to several of the medicines used for energy, acupuncture is most effective when it is used for treating persistent conditions that don’t respond readily to conventional medicines, or when dealing with all of the disorders that are related to the lifestyle of that person.
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