5 Reasons You Should Try Acupuncture Right Now

In the West, acupuncture is still sometimes dismissed — even as more western doctors are incorporating the practice into their treatment plans. Nonetheless, acupuncture is becoming increasingly recognized as an effective treatment for relieving pain, easing stress and even combating insomnia. And in the right hands, acupuncture can also be used to treat a wide array of other symptoms and disorders — as it has been in China and many other countries for centuries.

There is nothing magical or superstitious about it. A doctor's office in Shanghai or Hong Kong is not so different from what you'd find in the United States. What is different however, is that acupuncture is a highly respected and frequently used modality for a range of health and medical conditions.

As practitioners and patients in Asia know quite well, the benefits of acupuncture extend much farther, into areas that might even surprise you. Here are five reasons why acupuncture could soon go mainstream as a form of treatment:

1. Allergies

While Western medicine focuses on treating the uncomfortable symptoms of allergies, Traditional Chinese Medicine — using a combination of acupuncture and herbal treatments — treats the whole person from the inside out. This approach works not only to treat the acute symptoms felt during an allergic reaction, but to regulate the immune system. A healthy functioning immune system will improve an individual's health overall, and reduce the severity and frequency of symptoms.

2. Weight Loss

The inability to achieve a healthy weight can be one of the most stubborn problems patients face, and part of the problem lies in the hypothalamus — the part of the brain that regulates hunger, among other things. Acupuncture can be used to stimulate the hypothalamus, quieting its hunger signals and normalizing appetite. And because acupuncture also relieves stress, it inhibits "stress-eating" and rids the body of fat-storing stress hormones like cortisol.

3. Chemotherapy Side-Effects

Chemotherapy uses drugs to inhibit the growth of cancer cells, a critically important action in fighting cancer. But its side effects — nausea, sore joints, dry mouth, hot flashes and fatigue — are tough on the patient. Acupuncture and electro-acupuncture work to activate chemicals in the brain that block pain. This creates relaxing, pleasurable sensations that can provide much-needed relief for patientsundergoing treatment. Patients can also choose acupressure and cold laser acupuncture, which achieve similar results without the use of needles.

4. Infertility

When the body's physiological systems are impaired by stress, or when neurological connectivity is unbalanced and hormones are being triggered in unhealthy ways, infertility can result. Frustratingly, modern fertility treatments are often hampered by these underlying issues. Acupuncture works to help reset neurological circuits. This can reduce hormonal imbalances and overall stress, and boosts the efficacy of fertility treatments.

5. Smoking Cessation

Nicotine is highly addictive, and the symptoms provoked by quitting smoking include intense cravings, irritability, anxiety, poor sleep, headache, increased appetite, fatigue and difficulty concentrating.

Western aids like the nicotine patch merely delay the onset of symptoms. True relief and success in quitting are possible through the use of acupuncture, which can reduce cravings and alleviate withdrawal symptoms. When you add stress relief to the process, quitting smoking can become easier and totally possible. A qualified practitioner will also provide personalized exercise and dietary recommendations, herbal supplements and an analysis of your triggers for smoking and how to avoid them.

Acupuncture has countless applications for patient health. When combined with other modalities from Traditional Chinese Medicine, or in an integrated fashion with western medicine, the results can be highly effective. This ancient discipline treats the whole person, restoring balance, strengthening immunity and helping physiological systems thrive.

This article originally appeared on mindbodygreen.com and was written by Dr. Daniel Hsu

Emergency doctors are using Acupuncture to treat pain, now here’s the evidence

Emergency medicine is not all about life and death situations and high-tech solutions. Our study, the largest of its kind in the world, shows using acupuncture in the emergency department can relieve acute pain.

The study, published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, finds acupuncture is as effective as medication in treating pain for lower back pain and ankle sprain. But it took more than an hour for either to provide adequate pain relief.

Our study builds on previous research to show the effectiveness of acupuncture to treat chronic (long-term) pain.

Yet, there are several barriers to using acupuncture routinely in emergency departments.

What is acupuncture and who practices it?

Using acupuncture to relieve pain involves placing needles in various parts of the body to stimulate the release of endorphins and other neurochemicals, which can act as the body’s naturally occurring pain relievers.

For generations various cultures around the world have used acupuncture to treat multiple conditions, including providing pain relief. And in Australia, it is reimbursed through the Medicare Benefits Schedule when administered by a medical doctor.

Further reading: Modern acupuncture: panacea or placebo?

Acupuncture is one of the most accepted forms of complementary medicine among Australian general practitioners. It also appears in treatment guidelines for doctors in how to manage pain.

Why we ran the study and what we did

Anecdotally, we were aware that several emergency department doctors, in both public and private hospitals in Australia, were treating patients’ pain with acupuncture. But until this large federally-funded study, no-one had set up a trial like it to show how effective it was.

Our trial was an “equivalence” study, which means we aimed to see if the different treatments were equivalent rather than seeing if they were better than placebo. We did this as it would not be ethical to give a placebo to people coming to an emergency department for pain relief.

So, we randomly assigned more than 500 patients to receive standard painkillers, standard painkillers plus acupuncture, or acupuncture alone when they presented with back pain, migraine or ankle sprain at four Melbourne hospitals (some private, some public). While the patients knew which treatment they had, the researchers involved in assessing their pain didn’t (known as a single-blind study).

The type of acupuncture we used included applying needles at specific points on the body for each condition, as well as along points chosen by the treating acupuncturist. This was to reflect what would happen during regular clinical practice.

Doctors who were also qualified medical acupuncturists and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (registered in Victoria with the Chinese Medicine Registration Board of Australia) performed the acupuncture.

After treatment, we assessed patients’ pain after an hour, and every hour until discharge. We also rang them for an update 24-48 hours after being discharged.

What we found

We found acupuncture, either alone or with painkillers, was equivalent to drugs-alone in providing pain relief for lower back pain, ankle sprain, but not for migraine.

When patients looked back on their treatment, the vast majority (around 80%) were satisfied with their treatment regardless of which treatment they had.

However, no treatment provided good pain relief until after the first hour.

What are the implications?

Our findings suggest acupuncture may be a viable option for patients who come to the emergency department for pain relief. This is especially important for those who cannot or choose not to have analgesic drugs.

This is also an important finding in light of the potential for side effects and abuse with opioid analgesics, which might otherwise be used to relieve pain in the emergency department.

Previous research shows using acupuncture to treat chronic pain is comparable to morphine, is safer and doesn’t lead to dependence. Our findings suggest acupuncture also has a role in treating acute pain.

However, our research raises several issues, not only about conducting such research but also in implementing our findings in practice.

We had to overcome many ethical, policy and regulatory issues before we started. These included issues around the qualifications of medical and non-medical acupuncturists and employing traditional Chinese medicine practitioners to deliver acupuncture in a western medical hospital.

And to more widely implement our findings, we need to discuss the type of practitioners best placed to deliver acupuncture in hospital, what type of training they need to work in the emergency department and what type of conditions they should treat.

Hopefully, our study will spark further research to address these issues and lead to the development of safe and effective protocols for acute pain relief that may involve combining both modern and ancient forms of medicine to achieve rapid and effective analgesia for all emergency department patients.

This article originally appeared on theconversation.com

The Chinese Medicine Meridian System

So, what is a meridian anyway? This is one of the first questions students of Chinese medicine want to understand. Simply put, a meridian is an ‘energy highway’ in the human body. Qi (chee) energy flows through this meridian or energy highway, accessing all party of the body. Meridians can be mapped throughout the body; they flow within the body and not on the surface, meridians exist in corresponding pairs and each meridian has many acupuncture points along its path.

The term ‘meridian’ describes the overall energy distribution system of Chinese Medicine and helps us to understand how basic substances of the body (Qi, blood and body fluids) permeate the whole body. The individual meridians themselves are often described as ‘channels’ or even ‘vessels’ which reflects the notion of carrying, holding, or transporting qi, blood and body fluids around the body.

It is tempting to think of the meridians of the human body the same way as we think of the circulatory system, as the meridians are responsible for the distribution of the basic substances throughout the body just like the circulatory system, but here is where the similarities end. Conventional anatomy and physiology would not be able to identify these pathways in a physical sense in the way that blood vessels can be identified.

It is more useful to consider the meridian system as an energetic distribution network that in itself tends towards energetic manifestation. Meridians can be best understood as a process rather than a structure.

Practitioners of Chinese Medicine must be as knowledgeable about these meridian channels as the Western Doctor is about anatomy and physiology of the physical body. Without this thorough understanding, successful acupuncture treatments would be difficult. A practitioner of Chinese Medicine must know how and where to access the qi energy of the body to facilitate the healing process.

There are twelve main meridians, or invisible channels, throughout the body with Qi or energy flows. Each limb is traversed by six channels, three Yin channels on the inside, and three Yang channels on the outside. Each of the twelve regular channels corresponds to the five Yin organs, the six Yang organs as well as the Pericardium and San Jiao. These are organs that have no anatomical counterpart in Western medicine but also relate to processes in the body. It is also important to remember that organs should not be thought of as being identical with the physical, anatomical organs of the body.

Each meridian is a Yin Yang pair, meaning each Yin organ is paired with its corresponding Yang Organ: the Yin Lung organ, for example, corresponds with the Yang large intestine.

Qi flows in a precise manner through the twelve regular meridians or channels. First, Qi flows from the chest area along the three arm Yin channels (Lung, Pericardium, and Heart) to the hands. There they connect with the three paired arm Yang channels (Large Intestine, San Jiao and Small Intestine) and flow upward to the head. In the head they connect with their three corresponding leg Yang Channels (Stomach, Gall Bladder and Bladder) and flow down the body to the feet. In the feet they connect with their corresponding leg Yin channels (Spleen, Liver, Kidney) and flow up again to the chest to complete the cycle of Qi.

• Arm Tai Yin channel corresponds to the Lung
• Leg Tai Yin channel corresponds to the Spleen
• Arm Shao Yin channel corresponds to the Heart
• Leg Shao Yin corresponds to the Kidney
• Arm Jue Yin corresponds to the Pericardium
• Leg Jue Yin corresponds to the Liver
• Arm Yang Ming corresponds to the Large Intestine
• Leg Yang Ming corresponds to the Stomach
• Arm Tai Yang corresponds to the Small Intestine
• Leg Tai Yang corresponds to the Bladder
• Arm Shao Yang corresponds to the San Jiao
• Leg Shao Yang Channel corresponds to the Gall Bladder

The arm and leg channels of the same name are considered to ‘communicate’ with each other in Chinese medicine. Thus, problems in a given channel or organ can be treated by using various points on the communication ‘partner’. As an example: a problem with the lungs can be treated by using points on the Spleen channel as they are both Tai Yin channels.

In addition to the twelve regular meridians there are ‘Extraordinary Meridians’ that are not directly linked to the major organ system but have various specific functions:

1) they act as reservoirs of Qi and blood for the twelve regular channels, filling and emptying as required

2) they circulate jing or ‘essence’ around the body because they have a strong connection with the Kidneys

3) they help circulate the defensive Wei Qi over the trunk of the body and, as such, play an important role in maintaining of good health

4) they provide further connections between the twelve regular channels

The meridian system of the human body is a delicate, yet intricate web of interconnecting energy lines. If a person masters an understanding of this meridian system they will know the secrets of the flow of Qi energy in the body.

For a colored map of the meridians of the body visit Acupuncture Chart – Main Meridians.

This article originally appeared on http://www.acos.org/articles/the-chinese-medicine-meridian-system/