Why Acupuncture?
Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and my personal experience having been practicing and apprenticing for more than a decade now. Over the course of my education and employment, I have been privileged to work alongside some exceptionally talented physicians and TCM practitioners from both China, Europe, and the USA. Working in hospitals, community clinics, thriving private practice, and Salvation Army/AA type settings, my patients have included employees of both the CIA and FBI , congresspeople, cops, soldiers, drug addicts, homeless, athletes and rock stars. I have treated degenerative disorders of every stripe, epilepsy and seizure disorders, heart disease, cancer recovery, and every type of orthopedic and organ related issue imaginable. Having come from a scientific background while earning multiple undergraduate scientific degrees and related minors, many people asked me why I eventually turned to acupuncture. The answer is simple. The practice of acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine is based in the scientific principle. The original definition and origin of the word science comes from the Latin word scientia meaning knowledge, or knowledge about the natural world obtained through experiment and observation. What is any medicine really but experimentation with human physiology and observing the results? Where does the bulk of medicinal, if not all knowledge come from? Trial and error. In fact there are probably few modern practices today that can boast 2,500 years or more of continuous experimentation and accumulation of knowledge. 2,500 years of trial, error, notes, books, successes and failures all surviving in great detail.
What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is just one facet of TCM, which also includes herbal therapies, tui na or medical massage, moxabustion , cupping therapy, and gua sha or scraping. There are other modalities as well. By far the most familiar to people is acupuncture, which is the insertion of small, solid, sterile needles into various points throughout the body to stimulate the flow of blood and Qi which, according to Donald E. Kendall, in this sense is oxygenated blood. These needles are then retained for various lengths of time, typically 20-30 minutes, although patients can relax for much longer if they wish. An individual I worked with had a thermal imaging machine at his practice where you could see this in real time. He would literally show people what was happening, by imaging an injured joint or body area during treatment. Expensive toys. It was a promotional tool but it worked amazingly well. You could see the dramatic increase of blood flow, which is the absolute key to our bodies ability to heal. Blood flow is critical to removing metabolic byproducts that accumulate due to the inflammatory chain of events. Oxygen is critical to the growth and healing of new tissues. Acupuncture should be used in a similar fashion to western physical therapy and rehabilitation. When you are rehabbing an injury, you work and stretch the affected area everyday. Acupuncture works in a concurrent way, bringing a fresh supply of oxygen rich blood to the area being 'rehabbed' with each successive treatment. In China, acupuncture is given daily in hospitals, in combination with western medical treatment, tui na and herbal treatments. Aggressive treatment strategies in acute cases may call for two or more treatments daily. This is typical for stroke and paralysis victims.
Does it Work?
The most often asked question may be, 'Does it work?' This article here represents the clearest approval from western medicine and corporate media. If you are a documentary fan, 9,000 Needles is the story of a champion bodybuilder who suffers a devastating stroke. Left to his own devices by western medical system and insurance companies, he travels to China on his own dollar to undergo rigorous acupuncture stroke treatment. His ordeal and transformation are amazing. These are two examples, but there are literally mountains of research to back up its effectiveness. Learn Mandarin and you would have enough reading for a lifetime. Learn classical Mandarin and you might have reading for ten. The reality is, acupuncture has been practiced, and continues to be practiced, on every inhabited continent. Native peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe have all practiced herbal medicine certainly, and at least some primitive form of acupuncture as well. And we have thousands of years of documented evidence pertaining to potentially millions of individual cases within the scholarly catacombs of TCM.
Isn't it All in your Mind?
In the United States skeptics play the success of acupuncture off as psychosomatic, but I challenge them, wouldn't that affect all medicine equally? Couldn't any substance prescribed or procedure endured be subject to the same principal, and in fact are, hence double blind studies to prevent 'placebo' affect. In the eyes of the skeptic, what makes acupuncture so much more susceptible to placebo, than any number of western treatments or drugs? Is it the novelty factor to a western audience? What about the rest of the world which finds no novelty with it and still finds its use valuable? To me, this argument is easily refuted, and highly illogical, it's either all placebo, or none of it is. You can't have it both ways. If it isn't placebo, then clearly acupuncture is giving patients some benefit. And if it is all placebo, and our mind state really does have a measurable impact on our health, then acupuncture is a far greater vehicle to get in touch with that state of mind than western medicine in my opinion. Acupuncture forces you to relax for at least 20 minutes and breathe deeply. Nothing I can think of in western med, aside from some sort of horrible, clanging, tube-like, imaging machine does that. And good luck relaxing. Trust me, I've experienced them both, and acupuncture is far more enjoyable.
So Lets Get to the Questions
Ask me anything you like concerning my years of practice, education, crazy acupuncture I've had done or seen done, etc. and I will do my best to answer them all. I do not consider myself an expert, talk to me in another 30 years, but I do have a sizable pool of experience to draw from. As one mentor told my graduating class, you have just scratched the smallest piece of veneer off of the thousand year old chest of knowledge that is TCM. This can be an ongoing question/answer depending on the response to this post. Also, if I get lots of people asking about a specific topic I may do a weekly acupuncture update.
Disclaimer:
I realize there are incredibly close minded people out there that despite the enormity of evidence to the contrary, believe acupuncture doesn't work because a doctor, friend, or mainstream news story told them so. If you want to scream quack or some such nonsense please go elsewhere, this is a platform for people legitimately interested in learning about acupuncture and TCM.