When Can Acupuncture Help?
Even for those who can correctly identify acupuncture as the ancient Chinese medical practice of inserting needles in strategic anatomical locations, identifying how exactly acupuncture can help patients can be a challenge. It’s not easy for most people to easily connect the act of puncturing the skin with a needle and successful medical treatment, unless we’re talking about vaccines or antibiotics.
Acupuncture as a Treatment
Acupuncture has long been used to treat a wide range of conditions, including allergies, depression, headaches, strokes, hypertension, tinnitus, myopia, lower back pain, neck pain, rheumatoid arthritis...the list goes on.
Acupuncture treatment for tinnitus, for instance, is said to work because of the way that the needles can stimulate nerves in the ear, reducing overall pain and improving one’s hearing level. Tinnitus is increasingly common in a noisy world in which people pump noise more and more directly into their ears via wireless earphones and other devices. At the same time, not everyone wants to go down the traditional medical path to try and treat it. Acupuncture provides a good alternative.
That same principle of stimulating the body into action using the needles is the same basic way that the idea of acupuncture works for other purposes. The application of needles can stimulate endorphins and other positive bodily chemicals, which helps the patient to reduce their stress, anxiety and ultimately their levels of pain and discomfort.
Acupuncture for Other Purposes
Acupuncture isn’t all about pain relief and treatment of allergies, anxiety and depression. Though the jury is still out on how truly effective and evidence-based treatment is for things like acne, obesity, insomnia and infertility, there is some evidence to support the idea that acupuncture works well alongside more traditional methods of treating these issues.
Take obesity as an example. It has been noted that acupuncture can help people using traditional weight loss methods to lose more weight in a healthier way. It works about as well as most diet pills and prescription drugs, only with fewer side effects. The downside of acupuncture is merely the fact that you have to go somewhere and take the time to have it done whereas medication is just a question of popping a quick pill every now and then.
Acupuncture is said to help those with obesity who are trying to lose weight by first alleviating their stress. In many people, the phenomenon of “stress eating” is a cause of weight gain or at least failure of weight loss. Reducing stress levels can help to curb that issue. It can also be used to curb an excessive appetite in general, at least helping to keep the mind focused on eating when it is time to eat.
Besides helping those with obesity, acupuncture can help with a number of symptoms that negatively affect people’s lives. For instance, it can help to reduce various kinds of inflammation, the source of so much pain and suffering in people’s lives. It can also help balance blood sugar by first helping reduce cravings for sugar and subsequently helping people make better food choices that will ultimately help their issues with high salt levels, hypertension, cholesterol and other issues.
Finally, the release of endorphins from acupuncture can be a huge boon to patients in need of more energy. When one is more energised, they can quickly become more active and that more active lifestyle is a big part of improving overall health and well-being. Therefore, we can see that acupuncture works hard to penetrate --- no pun intended --- the roots of our various ailments and tries to get the body to better regulate itself. In doing so, we can all have a chance at a better lifestyle.
