Westerners have been turning to acupuncture and Chinese medicine to help them where pills and their general practitioners could not. Sufferers of conditions like fibromyalgia, tendonitis or osteoporosis sometimes feel like there’s never any respite from the constant aches and pains. Similarly, people with chronic headaches and depression would be best served to try a few sessions of Chinese acupuncture.

Many Western medical practitioners are baffled by how acupuncture works and therefore dispute its validity. However, there are several theories about why acupuncture and Chinese medicine is, in fact, successful at curing certain illnesses. In the “Gate Control” theory, it’s believed that slow-moving pain signals follow the body’s internal highway. By applying the needle, we can generate endorphins that move much quicker and push the pain signals out of the way. Because the slow pain is blocked in the pushing and shoving of signals, the pain sensation never actually reaches the brain.

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.”

A person’s reaction to Chinese Medicine And Acupuncture is purely personal. Some people feel minimal to no pain as the needles go in, while some feel sore. Chinese acupuncture invigorates some patients and calms others. Many patients come back for more than one treatment over time and find that it gets easier and easier. If they’re feeling a little bit of discomfort during a particular session, then they’ll know they’ve pushed themselves too hard that week. If we all just slowed down and took a moment, we’d be in much better shape – both mentally and physically.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 4:23 am and is filed under Healthy Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.