Acupuncture Treatment
A natural treatment, Acupuncture is often used as an alternative healing method. The method utilizes the insertion and manipulation of needles into points of the body in order to treat pain, disease, or to affect a change in action.
Generally acupuncture incorporates traditional Chinese medicine as part of its practice and theory. The use of acupuncture is believed to have originated in China, with the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean forms of this treatment having diverged from this original form.
Acupuncture dates back to prehistoric times and is among the oldest healing practices in the world. The goal for using acupuncture is to restore and maintain health by stimulating specific body points. It can also be used as a form of anesthesia.
There is simple acupuncture were the needles are inserted as is, a form that includes heating the needles up, and one where the needles are stimulated with electricity.
Stimulating the points without breaking the skin with needles is known as acupressure.
Natural Uses for Acupuncture
Acupuncture is believed to generally relieve pain, to work as an anesthesia, and as a treatment for disease and infertility. Besides being a specific treatment, regular acupuncture treatments are believed to prevent disease before it turns to illness, promoting general health.
Therapeutic Intervention
Acupuncture is also used as a method of therapeutic intervention. With some people utilizing acupuncture treatments to lose weight or stop smoking. Often when used for therapeutic purposes it is combined with relaxation techniques or hypnosis.
Acupuncture is often an effective treatment in adult post-operative care and dental pain, or for chemotherapy nausea and vomiting. It is often used advantageously in the treatment of addiction, menstrual cramps, headaches, fibromyalgia, and more.
Additional success with acupuncture treatments have been found in the treatment of:
- Stroke rehabilitation
- Tennis elbow
- Osteoarthritis
- Low back pain
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
Acupuncture treatments for asthma may be effective as part of a comprehensive management program.
Acupuncture Cautions
Anyone with a bleeding disorder would not be a good candidate for acupuncture. Nor should you utilize acupuncture if you're taking Warfarin, Coumadin, Aspirins, or other blood thinners.
If you have a pacemaker, don’t utilize any acupuncture treatments that use mild electrical pulses. If you are pregnant, you should not get any acupuncture treatments as this therapy has been known to stimulate labor.
