Acupuncture

Acupuncture is a complementary and alternative medical practice which is inserting acupuncture needles at the specific areas after the practitioner made a traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis. Acupuncture may help you musculoskeletal disorders, neurological disorders, joint disorders, women’s health, gastrointestinal disorders, allergies, addiction, mental health and pain including any discomfort.

However, there are not sufficent scientific evidences for recommending as one of modalities of treatments regarding as Evidence Based Medicine Practices in modern practice, even though traditionally the use of acupuncture is recommended for a while. Evidence Based Medicine is “philosophical origins extend back to mid-19th century Paris and earlier, is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research”(David, L. Sackett., 1997). And the practice of evidence-based medicine is a process of life-long, self-directed learning in which caring for our own patients creates the need for clinically important information about diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and other clinical and health care issues, and in which we (1) convert these information needs into answerable questions; (2) track down, with maximum efficiency, the best evidence with which to answer them (whether from the clinical examination, the diagnostic laboratory from research evidence, or other sources); (3) critically appraise that evidence for its validity (closeness to the truth) and usefulness (clincial applicability); (4) integrate this appraisal with our clinical expertise and apply it in practice; and (5) evaluate our performance(David, L. Sackett., 1997)

But nowadays lots of literatures and/or articles are available for online and offline resources due to continuous researches of acupuncture.

Therefore, your practitioner couldn’t claim for any treatments of acupuncture for your concerns. However, if you want to try acupuncture for your concerns, your practitioner may ask you your own researches by yourself for getting proper information from medical journals.

Especially, PUBMED is a data base search engine for medical articles in U.S.A. It is a resource to search for acupuncture. Please have a search for acupuncture for your concern. At present 24 Jul 2020, PubMed is showing 32,927 articles for acupuncture online.

“Acupuncture is a widely practiced system of medicine that has been in place for thousands of years. Consumer interest and use of acupuncture are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, as it is used to treat a multitude of symptoms and disease processes as well as to maintain health and prevent illness. A growing body of evidence increasingly validates the practice of acupuncture. Further developing scientific data will play an important role in the future of acupuncture and other complementary and alternative medicines in public health. Acupuncture is commonly used concurrently with conventional medicine.”
Furthermore, this article mentioned “Educating both the consumer and medical community is important to enable appropriate and evidence-based applications of acupuncture and integration with conventional medicine for high-quality patient care.”
from Mallory MJ, Do A, Bublitz SE, Veleber SJ, Bauer BA, Bhagra A. Puncturing the myths of acupuncture. J Integr Med. 2016;14(5):311-314. doi:10.1016/S2095-4964(16)60269-8

Acupuncture is located between surgical operations and medications.

Acupuncture couldn’t replace surgical operations and medications. However, certain conditions are not belong to surgical operation conditions and medications. In those conditions, acupuncture is useful.

What is acupuncture?

Acupuncture is one of traditional Chinese medicine practice used for more than 2000 years. It is empirical medicine for using for treatments of various disorders, especially in north east Asia countries such as China, Korea, Japan, etc.

Acupuncture is starting from Stone Age peoples. For example, when Stone Age peoples had pain, they were trying to massage at local areas. And then they were relieved from pain.Therefore, they are trying to continue using massage.

However, it was not getting better with massage. So they were trying other method such as pushing with sharp objects. At first time, they were using brunt stone or animal bone, however, they had problems such as infections, bleeding by damaging blood vessels, etc.

Therefore, they were looking for other methods such as metals. They were using bronze, however, bronze was not sharp and brunt, it was hard to insert to skin because it was easily bending.

And one day a soldier had been in battle field. He had been suffering stomach problems such as tummy aches, indigestion, acid reflux, and etc. He had an arrow at ST36 acupuncture point area of lower leg, which is area of origin of Tibialis Anterior muscle. After he took out an arrow from lower leg, his stomach problems were gone away. And he reported his doctor about his story. His doctor tried to needle other patients at same area for their stomach problems. And eventually, he also had a good result with treatment. Therefore, his doctor were using same point to other patients again and again, and he transferred his experiences to his colleagues and his students.

Then his students were tried another points near original points, and then he had similar effects, therefore, they were developing a group of acupuncture points called as channel or meridian. If a group of acupuncture points related with stomach, they were called as Stomach channel or meridian.

After peoples were developing iron, so they were using iron to make sharp object such as needles. Iron was superior than bronze in points of inserting to skin.

However, they had also problems, which was they were getting rust and not easy to maintain for good condition and infections due to using them by several peoples with same needles. Therefore, they were trying to use needles after preparing with fires before using them. However, it was very time consuming procedure to do so.

And practitioners were using gold and/or silver needles as well, they has been used until now. Because they found out that gold had property of tonification and silver had property of sedation. However, practically, they are very expensive and they couldn’t be disposed due to valuable metals. If they are reused again, they are needed sterilisation, and during continuous using they are getting brunt. Therefore, they are making more needling pains than first time using needles and infection possibilities as using again and again.

Nowadays, we are using stainless steels for making acupuncture needles and pre-sterilised single time using needles for preventing infections between peoples. After practitioner used needles, they were disposed with particular needle disposal boxes.

So acupuncture needles are always sharp and clean.

– No pain no gain

Many people are scare of needles, especially they are recalling memories about an experience with immunisation. Doctors and nurses are inserting dermal needles to their arms and hips for injecting immunisatioon fluids. However, you would get injection for immunisation for protecting yourself from infections.

Dermal needles might be thicker than acupuncture needles for inserting fluids to body. Therefore, acupuncture is very thin as similar size to your hair size. Usually, we are using 0.20mm thickness acupuncture needles for minimizing some pain when the acupuncture needles are penetrating the skin. However, sometimes you would feel some needling pains from acupuncture treatments due to the fact that human body has many nerve endings at our skins. “The average square inch (6.5 cm²) of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes, and more than 1,000 nerve endings.”from Bennett, Howard (25 May 2014). “Ever wondered about your skin?”. The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 October 2014.

That meaning is that even if practitioner really is doing effort to avoid nerve puncture, practitioner couldn’t see very small nerve endings, and sometimes you would feel pain with acupunture needlings. However, it is temporary. It will be going away with withdrawing needles quickly.

Needling pain is not only from puncturing nerve ending at skin. And if you are tired, you will be more sensitive than normally when you are not tired. In that case, I recommend you that you don’t skip the meals and morning tea snack, and afternoon snack between meals.

Acupuncture has several effects on your body. Typically, acupuncture helps local blood circulation improve. If local circulation is improved, local blood vessels are dilated and you would feel pulsating and/or throbbing pain at local area where you are treated.

That is why we told you. “No pain no gain.” You would pay small pain, however, you might be getting off big pain.

How acupuncture works

1. Neurological effects for musculoskeletal disorders: somatic reflexes

Acupuncture needles are simulating peripheral somatic nerve system to reflex skeletal muscles/ligaments/tendons for restoring normal muscle/ligament/tendon tone, which is meaning regulating muscle tone, for example, too much tight muscle will be relax and too lazy muscle will be tight up, clearing muscle spasms, and relieving muscle cramps.

Therefore, this mechanism may relieve strong muscle spasm and/or cramp due to overuse, injuries, trauma, and accidents. This mechanism is very important to relieve your problem.

When muscle is spasming and/or tighten up, your peripheral nerves might be jammed, due to the fact that nerves are penetrating between muscles and sometimes inside muscles. Therefore, muscle spasming can cause nerves are constrict by muscles, leading to nerve pathway blockage.

Do you have any experience of muscle cramp when you are swimming?

Usually lots of swimmer are carrying small knife for emergency. Why are they carrying knife? Because they know that when they have muscle cramp during swimming it is danger, therefore, they are using knife for making bleeding at their legs for relieving muscle cramps.

Swimmers don’t know what mechanism is there. However, they are using this somatic reflex mechanism to relive muscle cramp.

2. Neurological effects for internal organs’ disorders: autonomic reflexes

Acupuncture is stimulating autonomic nerve system to return your abnormal organ functions to homeostatic status, leading to a effect of regulation of body function. If your pancreas is underactive/overactive, an acupuncture needle stimulates autonomic nerve system to act pancreas more/less to make pancreatic juice regulate. Therefore, it helps regulating PH level by regulating pancreatic juice and sugar level by regulating insulin.

3. Mechanical/Physical Effects

Acupuncture needles are made by stainless steel which has a property of good conductivity of heat and electric current. When your local tissues are inflamed by any reasons, inflammation can cause to develop heat, redness, and swelling on local tissues, called as inflammatory reactions. Therefore, those inflammatory reaction may cause pain. Acupuncture needle may go to area of inflamed area  after penetrating skin and then withdraw inflamed heat from problem area to outside of body and dispersing heat. Therefore, your acupuncturist may ask you to stay with for a while for relieving inflamed heat. Furthermore, when acupuncture needles are taken out from body, needles may make holes on inflamed area for a while, and then extracellular fluid may escape from area of inflammation. Those escaped fluid may cause relief of pressure on inflamed area. Those mechanism may do clearing inflammation.

(Note) Skin is insulator to keep warm our body and protector to protect inside our body structures such as organs, and muscles , however, skin doesn’t help to relieve inflamed heat from inside of body.

Elaine said that “Without skin, we would quickly fall prey to bacteria and perish from water and heat loss.”

3. Improving blood circulation

Acupuncture may help local tissues improve blood circulation when acupuncture needles are inserted, even though treatment is finished. Therefore, lots of patients are reporting such as throbbing and/or pulsing pain on local areas. It may help you making tissue healing properly.

If blood circulation is improved, blood is flowing at local area. Blood contains red blood cells(RBCs), white blood cells(WBCs), etc. Therefore, RBCs supply oxygen to local tissue leading to improve local tissue metabolism, making more ATP. And WBCs are fighting and cleaning with infections and/or inflammations at local tissues.

3. Humoral Effects

Acupuncture may make relieving humoral substances  such as endogenous opioids and oxytocin which is essential to functional change of organ systems. For example, β-endorphin has high affinity to μ-receptor and is important in pain control and regulation of blood pressure and body temperature. Hypothalamus and a neuronal network which projects to midbrain and brainstem nuclei and, via this route, may influence pain sensitivity as well as autonomic functions.

Science Evidence of Acupuncture

https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/05/31/2914057.htm

4. Enhancement of immunity

Acupuncture may help boost-up of immune system: 1) Increase in phagocytosis by 1 to 2 times even in the healthy persons, 2) Begin to Increase phagocytic power of leukocytes and cells of reticulo-endothelial system about 3 hours after needling, and reach a peak level 12 to 24 hours later. And usually, there is a decline back to normal level in 48 hours unless effect is reinforced by further treatment.3) Increase a 2 to 8 fold in antibodies, rise in gammaglobulin and specific immunoglobulin after acupuncture, 4) Increase peristalsis which assist in expulsion of irritant matters from gastrointestinal organs and crypts in mucous membrane, 5) Inhibitory effect on inflammatory exudation, leading to check spread and reduce areas of necrosis which may arise in the course of inflammation, due to a more efficient phagocytosis and stimulation of reticulo-endothelial cell function., 6) Encouraging formation of granular tissue and promoting reparative activities and scar formation in wound healing., 7) Relieving spasm in lymphatic vessels and promoting drainage of lymph and reducing stasis and blockage in lymph vessels

5. Effects on Psychiatric Disorders

Acupuncture may have effects on 1) Regulation of metabolism of serotonin, noradrenalin, adenosine, acetylcholine, endorphin, and other neurotransmitters, 2) Alternation of brain potentials, 3) Control of post-anaesthetic psychotic disturbances, 4) Alleviation of relief of insomnia and withdrawal of addictive substances

What do you feel and What improvements may you expect from acupuncture treatments?and how do you care by yourself after treatment

Improvement that is noticed during a course of acupuncture doesn’t follow a steady course. As a rule, the degree of improvement and its duration may increase with each treatment till the stage may reach where improvement persists and become lasting. The improvement  from the first treatment may last minutes, hours or days, the effect lasting longer with each repetition.

Some patients improve rapidly at the beginning of treatment but may take a long time to achieve that extra little bit; others improve slowly at the beginning and then take a sudden turn. However, majority follow an intermediate course. Most often there are various ups and downs during treatment and there is rarely an absolutely steady improvement-nature doesn’t know straight lines. Not frequently there is a setback at some stage of treatment, which is then overcome by altering treatment scheme.

Basically, acupuncture is similar to repair/maintain your vehicle. Your vehicle needs repairs and proper maintenance such as lubrication, filling coolant, replacing brake pads, and checking air pressure of tires. How do you achieve that goal? You have to check regular checking items and replace new items for damaged parts, etc. When you come to acupuncture clinic, you may be expecting some dramatic results from one or two treatments. Some patients may be getting that results. However, most of patients need proper number of sessions to help & restore their health back to normal (balance state called as homeostatic conditions). Your practitioner may ask you certain treatment plan to follow.

For musculoskeletal disorders, your practitioner might be needling at local areas you had problems and distal points for various reasons.

Usually, after treatments, you might be feeling some pain and/or discomforts which is called as needling pain. It is quite different pain when you compared with pain, which is pain why you came to clinic for treatments. You may feel needling pain for several hours and/or overnight. And then it would be going away. You will feel better.

After a few days, your practitioner wants to see you again, because effect of acupuncture is fading and you might feel pains at other areas.

The reason is you had problems at several areas, however, your body let you know number one pain at first. Therefore, your practitioner want to treat worst area at first. It is best for you.

If number one pain is going away, the second pain really is coming up to be treated.

When you see your practitioner at initial consultation, your practitioner would let you know what is your problem and how it would be treated by a plan for you called as a customised plan. And your practitioner might be asked for some X-rays, Ultrasound scans, MRI, CT, Blood tests, etc. In that case, your practitioner may ask you to see your doctor for above mentioned tests for confirming any problems.

How long do I need treatments?

Lots of patients are thinking acupuncture is a magic bullet to cure everything. There is no magic cure and/or no magic needle. Please be patient. And you might be needed proper number of sessions as your practitioner advices you.

Effects of acupuncture are always different between individual patients, due to reasons, which are individual patients have different conditions such as strength of immune system, quality of blood & quantity of blood, conditions of internal organs, what disorders they present, for examples, immune disorders, functional disorders with or without physical tissue damages, how many areas and how long had been with disorders. Generally speaking, if you have long term problems, you may be needed long term treatments for full recovery. Your practitioner usually may ask you return for further treatment, until you’ll get 3 out of 10 (10 is initial status of your disorder and 3 is finial status of your disorders), that meaning is treatment is going until your body can maintain without any help. However, although you leave treatment plan earlier than time practitioner expected, your treatment still may be effective for some.

Your health is your responsibility.

Please be patient.

If you lost your health, you lost your everything.

What is Homeostasis?

Homeostasis is to maintain relatively stable status even if outside environments are getting changed.

Ancient people also knew this term, they are saying as Yin-Yang.

-Cold pack and/or Hot pack

Many patients asked about using hot packs and/or cold packs. Usually, most of patients had inflammations and muscle spasms at local areas. Hot packs are good for blood circulations and relaxing muscles at local areas, however, it is no good for inflammations due to increasing heat as inflammation is making heat.

Cold packs are good for inflammations due to decrease of heat, however, it is no good for blood circulations and relaxing muscles.

So your practitioner may ask you for no cold pack and no hot pack. Just leave it alone. Acupuncture itself is helping clearing inflammations.

You don’t need any things to do. Just take easy until treatment plan is finished, because your body need time to heal. Usually after treatments’ plan is finished, you can start exercises for making you stronger.

Chinese Herbal Medicine

Chinese Herbal Medicine is a practice that is prescribed by Chinese Herbal Medicine Practitioner with various Chinese Herbs after he/she made a Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis.

Western pharmaceutical drugs capitalize on a single biologically
active ingredients to produce a specific physiological effect. This
accounts for their potency and also for their secondary or side effects.
Although drugs may control symptoms, they often do not treat pathological process. For example, antibiotics may eliminate bacteria from
you and also your immune cells, due to the fact that antibiotics doesn’t have any brain for differentiating between bacterias and your immune cells. They are killing everything. Therefore, 1st dose of antibitics might be helping to get bacteria(may be specific spectrum bacteria) off from our body, however, our immune cells also are getting off and good bacteria in your GUT are also getting off.

Therefore, good things are getting off from our body. And then they are not quickly backing up as you are expecting. So our immune system is not stronger than before. Before our immune system are backing up as normal, if we are getting attack from another bacteria, our immune system is not stronger enough to resist and/or fight. We’ll get another infection. And then we have another dose of antibiotics leading to same story again as before. As before, another antibiotics are killing some of bacteria and immune system with good bacteria at GUT. So our system is weaker than 1st time attack from bacteria. We are weaker than before. It is vicious cycle happened.

But antibiotics do not improve a person’s resistance to being infected; diuretics rid body of excess fluid yet do not
improve kidney function; aspirin controls arthritic pain without altering degenerative course of disease.

Pain killer medication is quite popular. Many patients are taking pain killers for reducing their pain.

Pain killer may reduce your pain without any treating your main problems.

Sometimes further aggravations or adverse side effects may result. For instance, yeast infections may follow a course of antibiotics; kidney damage may result from longterm use of diuretics; lengthy use of aspirin may cause lining of stomach to erode, triggering internal bleeding.
With Chinese medicinal herbs, active ingredients are enfolded
within whole plants called as conjugate; this meaning is one herb has not only one ingredient and it has many other ingredients with it.

And this tends to buffer their side effects. Furthermore, herbs are often blended together to counteract undesired effects and enhance intended effects, called as formula. Formulation is fine art in Chinese herbal medicine.

Formulation is meaning that we are using several herbs for your conditions.

For example, most of patients are complaining sinus with difficult breathing

Your Chinese herbal medicine practitioner addresses the underlying condition as defined by traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis and, when used properly, rarely cause disagreeable consequences.

A study for adverse drug reaction in United States was reported “During the 8-year study period 2,313,902,748 person years were evaluated and 2341 ADR-related deaths were identified. Annual rates ranged from 0.08/100,000 to 0.12/100,000, and rates increased significantly over time at a rate of 0.0058 per year. ADR deaths were significantly more likely in persons older than 55 years. The risk was greatest in those aged 75 years or older (OR 6.96, 95% CI 6.30 to 7.69). ADR deaths were higher among men than women. Rates varied by race and ethnicity and were highest among blacks (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.54). Geographically, rates varied widely between states. Based on urbanization, rates were highest in extremely rural (non-core) areas (OR 2.05, 95% CI 1.76 to 2.38). The most common drug classes associated with death were anticoagulants, opioids, and immunosuppressants.”

Chinese Medicine Philosophy

Jing(Life Force) Qi(Energy) Shen(Mind)

Jing (essence)

Jing is essence for life. It is coming from parents at conception. It determines each person’s basic constitutional make-up, strength, and vitality. It might be called as genetic codes. If your genetic codes are good designs with good qualities, your gene has exellent, strong consitution. You will be strong and smart.

Therefore, you can’t change your Jing coming from your parents. However, after birth, if you are managing properly and willing to do some efforts, your Jing would be changing and you could be trasnfering your next generations with improved genetic codes.

Qi ( Energy)

Qi is vital energy to live. Without energy, we can’t be survived.

After we eat foods and drink water, our stomach and intestines will be starting digestion process and absortion of nutrients and water. And our respiratory system will be absorbing oxygen when we are breathing air. Eventually glucose and oxygen will be entering to individual cells. Individual cells have mitochondria which are producing bio-energy called as ATP through Krebs cycle.

Women’s life cycle

Five phases