What You Should Know About Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
Written by admin on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 in Asthma.
According to the most recent study of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in the United States, a whopping 8.2 million Americans underwent acupuncture treatment at some point in their lives! Out of that enormous number, 2.1 million had used acupuncture within the past year. A 1971 New York Times article by James Reston introduced the idea of using needles to relieve pain and the media has been all over Eastern medicine ever since. Of course, there’s a lot more to Chinese medicine than just a recommended visit to an acupuncture clinic. You have a whole world of herbal medicines and herbal remedies at your disposal.
The philosophy behind acupuncture and Chinese medicine is based around Dao (sometimes referred to as Taoism). The natural laws promote moderation, balance and harmony with our environment. The three treasures that fuel us are: Qi (energy), Shen (the spirit) and Jing (our essence). Qi manifests itself in the heart, lungs and oxygen circulating in the blood. Shen expresses itself as personality, thought, perception and self-reflexivity. The Jing is sort of like genetics, growth/development and reproduction.
Another Chinese theory is called the “Electrical” theory, which says that the body is always discharging slight magnetic energy and that Chinese acupuncture actually works by manipulating the body’s electromagnetic fields, altering chemical neurotransmitters in the process. In 1999, British doctors found that collagen was a good conductor of electricity — and Dr. Mae Won Ho concluded that “the kind of conducting water channels that more or less follow the collagen fibres may correspond to the so-called meridians of the acupuncture channels. So when you put a needle in you are giving a local electrical stimulation which then enables this positive electricity to be conducted to some distant sites.”
Cancer patients undergoing chemo have started turning to acupuncture and Chinese medicine to cure negative side effects, like nausea or headaches. Hard-to-cure problems like osteoarthritis, asthma, drug addiction and fibromyalgia chronic pain have all been treated with acupuncture or Chinese herbal supplements in the past. Regardless of how it works, it’s a safer, less expensive alternative to visiting your general practitioner and local pharmacist, even with Western health insurance plans covering prescription medicines.