How Can Acupuncture Help Me? /  by Kilgore Trout

When I first started studying and practicing East Asian medicine over a decade ago, it was still "alternative" enough that lots of folks I talked to had no idea it was even a legitimate medical option for them. Often, the people who sought me out had tried everything else first-- we were the last stop on the healing journey for most. It was always a pleasure to share the medicine, and help people get better, and little by little, people who worked with us got better, shared our name, and told their friends and families how acupuncture helped them. 

A lot has changed since then. Studies are validating acupuncture left and right, for a wide variety of conditions ranging from perimenopausal hot flashes to migraine headaches, from post traumatic stress disorder, to low back pain. We are in the news frequently, with acupuncture being featured in the VA system and many prominent hospitals. Now, people don't see our medicine as a weird alternative any more: Their doctors are referring them to acupuncture in record numbers, and everyone knows someone who utilizes it. We here at the Tao Healing Arts Center have direct referrals from the emergency room, the VA, from Ear, Nose and Throat specialists, and from pediatricians, and many other offices. More and more people are finding themselves being recommended for acupuncture treatment, and sharing this medicine remains a pleasure, and a privilege.

So, maybe you got our name from your physician, or you got a prescription for your work related injury, and you have heard about acupuncture from friends and family, but you are feeling a little wary. This all seems a little weird still. You are skeptical. Perhaps you think your pain has gone on too long, or the MRI results were a little too severe for something like acupuncture to help you. Maybe the idea of acupuncture seems a little frightening. You have no idea what a session even looks like. Maybe you have come to believe that there is nothing that could possibly help. Ultimately, you are wondering, "how can acupuncture possibly help me?"

We hear you. 

Before we talk a little about how acupuncture works, it seems like it might be a good idea to walk you through a typical visit. Initially, we would like for you to get comfortable, and tell us about the reason for your visit. We want to understand your chief complaint, and everything there is to know about it, but we also want to get to know your unique constitution. It can be a very profound experience for folks when they realize that several individual symptoms that have troubled them for years may tie together as part of a larger pattern of symptoms, and that it is treatable. Further, we want to know what optimum health would look like for you. What activities do you wish you could do? What lifestyle changes are you working with? Maybe you feel fine, but your ankle hurts because you sprained it playing tennis. Perhaps you have feel like you have been running on empty, and your headache gets worse when you eat too much sugar, and you have always wanted to eat less sugar, but the stress makes you feel helpless to stop. Maybe you have a diagnosis that troubles you, because you feel like if you could just lose fifty pounds, you would not have your pain any more. You also may be suffering with a chronic illness, and feel like you have tried everything with no help. Regardless of whether we are treating a sixteen year old gymnast with a straightforward injury, or a person suffering from a chronic immune condition, we will listen to your unique story, and we will tailor what we do not just to your injury, or your disease, but to you as a person, and the results can be life-changing.

From there, the visit can go a lot of different ways. Generally, we will talk with you and get your consent to do a combination of different treatment modalities to get the optimum results. A typical treatment may begin with 10-20 minutes of massage, mobilization, and acupressure to warm up and correct soft tissue injuries. We may gently assess the movement of a joint. We may use various heating therapies like infared heat or moxibustion if an area is cold. For many people, Chinese medical massage has played a key role in relieving spasms, reducing swelling, breaking up myofascial trigger points, and restoring full range of motion to their joints. Our style of massage, however, can be applied for a variety of internal conditions as well, including hypertension, stress, dysmenorrhea. 

Then, if it is the best modality for you, we may use acupuncture. Generally, this is the part that makes people feel a little nervous if it is their first time, and we completely understand! Please know that your comfort is paramount, and most people do not find the sensations they experience particularly uncomfortable. An acupuncture treatment often feels like this: First, you lay down comfortably on one of our massage tables, or in a reclining chair. You will feel pressure as we palpate various areas, looking for tightness, sensitivity, or temperature changes. Then you will feel a tapping sensation, followed by a sensation of warmth, or heaviness. A common response we get from first time patients is "that's it?" Even folks who are very nervous relax after the first couple points, and we modify what we are doing based on your feedback. Often, people will start to feel relief from their symptoms as we continue the treatment. A very common sensation is a deep relaxation; this is actually an evidence-based mechanism that acupuncture stimulates, regardless of what we are treating. Throughout the whole experience, we are communicating with you, and making sure you are warm, comfortable, and secure. If you feel up for it, we let you take a little nap. Then, about fifteen to twenty minutes later, you are up off the table, often feeling refreshed, relaxed, and ready for your day. 

Finally, we will give you strategies for continuing your path to optimum health. These often include gentle movement, breathing exercises, joint mobility work, and postural suggestions to practice. Depending on the condition, we may give you external herbal patches, liniments, soaks, or pastes to treat your condition with at home. We may also recommend Chinese herbal medicine, or dietary strategies, all of which are tailored just for you. 

So, that is what an hour with us might look like. You can see that we utilize a blend of East Asian medicine to specifically treat YOU, but that leaves the question of HOW? 

Most often, people intuitively understand how massage and joint mobilization can help them, and our targeted therapeutic massage doesn't require faith or a placebo effect for you to feel what we are doing. But acupuncture... that one tends to raise a lot of questions. 

How does acupuncture work?

There are numerous studies available showing its effectiveness that you can check out on our facebook page, and many of the mechanisms that are being studied are generating all kinds of new research. We are happy to discuss any article you come across, or any questions you may have! Here, we would like to try to explain in plain English some of the basic ways that we know acupuncture can help you:

1) Acupuncture is amazing at treating pain: There are several ways that acupuncture can provide instant pain relief for a huge variety of conditions. In fact, acupuncture can be utilized as a form of analgesia in dental work and many types of surgery. There are a variety of ways acupuncture can help your painful condition that go beyond simply making you feel better, though. For instance, acupuncture can break up myofascial trigger points to release muscles, it can stimulate motor points to immediately release a spasm, and it can reduce inflammation and swelling. Acupuncture is widely recognized as an extraordinary tool for the treatment of muscular and myofascial pain. When a muscle is released, often this takes pressure off nerves that are irritated and inflammed, and numbness and tingling from nerve impingements are reduced. 

2) Acupuncture is anti-inflammatory. More and more research is looking at the connection between inflammation and a huge variety of diseases. Acupuncture can help your body modulate inflammation in many different areas, from your digestive system in irritable bowel syndrome, to your stuffy nose with seasonal allergies. Acupuncture is a safe, evidence-based way to help you feel better from a wide variety of autoimmune diseases, and chronic inflammatory issues. 

3) Acupuncture triggers your body to heal itself. Often, when we have pain or dysfunction, we do things to mask it. We feel sluggish, so we drink a bunch of caffeine, or pop a stimulant. We are in pain, so we take a narcotic, or anti-inflammatory. All too often, the results are short-lived, and we find ourselves generating more imbalances in our body. Acupuncture has been shown in multiple ways to trigger certain regulatory processes to occur in the body that can cause a kind of "reset" in several different body systems. For example: With hot flashes, patients are often given synthetic hormones in order to experience some relief. Acupuncture, on the other hand, will help the body to hormonally re-regulate itself so that the transition into menopause is comfortable and symptom free. Another example is in the treatment of ganglion cysts: When we stimulate the area with acupuncture, it triggers the immune system to attack it, and rapid reduction of the cyst begins to occur of the course of several treatments.

4) Acupuncture boosts your system: We are able to stimulate functioning in various body structures in a wide variety of ways. Acupuncture can boost your immune system, enhance and improve your digestion, relax your nervous system, boost your sex drive, and help you have the energy you need. Acupuncture can even help boost the functions of your sensory system in macular degeneration, tinnitus, and hearing loss! Sometimes this boosting effect is achieved by reducing inflammation in an area, allowing it to work better. Other times, by stimulating the skin over bundles of nerves, or in various local areas, we are able to stimulate the regions of your brain in charge of affected structure. For instance, one functional magnetic resonance imaging study that was recently published showed that an acupuncture point that has been used for over 2000 years to improve vision lights the primary visual cortex in the brain up with neural activity! Many people use acupuncture seasonally to boost their immune systems so that they can avoid colds and flu. Some people just get acupuncture so they can feel amazing all week, and be at peak performance. 

5) Acupuncture reduces stress: Numerous studies have shown how acupuncture can have an immediate effect on our body's physiology when it comes to managing stress. Stress and anxiety has a large impact on our minds, our hormones, our immune systems, and virtually every aspect of our lives can be affected by it. Sleep, digestion, pain, frequent illness, headaches, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and even cancer can be have stress playing a key and damaging role. As a treatment for stress, acupuncture has an immediate and noticeable effect of calming the body and the mind-- this has been utilized by the US military for post traumatic stress, as well as in addiction treatment centers all over New York State. With repeated treatment, neural pathways that fire together wire together, and your body starts to adapt with a healthier pathway to physically managing stress and anxiety. Combine that with certain types of relaxed movements and breathing techniques at home, and you have a very powerful tool for wellness that can prevent and treat myriad conditions where stress is the culprit. 

As you can see, we are passionate about what we do here at the Tao Healing Arts Center. As more and more people seek out our services, we know that you have questions. I hope that this article helps demystify acupuncture a little, and I hope that you won't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions. You can message us on Facebook, email us, or call, and we will happily chat with you about your reasons for visiting us. 

We have helped thousands of people, just like you, and we would love to hear from you.

Call 607-387-4577 today, and find out how we can help!