Acupuncture Treatment and Its Benefits

Acupuncture is a form of medical treatment that involves inserting very thin needles through your skin at strategic points on the body. Acupuncture, unlike mainstream medical science, is an alternative therapy whose origins can be traced to China. Due to widespread information, people tend to give acupuncture a bad name. If someone wanted to stick needles into you saying, “Hey! This will make you feel better,” you’d probably think they’re a quack. But is acupuncture simply the art of getting poked by needles? Or is there something more to it? (spoiler. There’s definitely more to it). 

In this article, we’re going to look at how acupuncture works, its many benefits, its many effects, and whether it helps with sports injuries.

How Acupuncture Works

So, as we’ve seen, acupuncture involves inserting needles into specific parts of the skin. These are trigger points believed to stimulate the nervous system. Traditional Chinese medicine dictates that the human body consists of over 2,000 acupuncture points connected by pathways. These pathways create energy called Qi (pronounced “chee”), which is responsible for the body’s overall well-being.

Disruption of the flow of Qi creates health problems, and acupuncture aims to fix those problems by addressing the trigger points. Now, when these trigger points are “poked,” they release chemicals into the brain, spinal cord, and muscles—basically, biochemical changes—thereby balancing the flow of Qi throughout the body.

These biochemical changes may stimulate your body’s natural ability to heal itself while promoting physical and emotional health.

Pretty neat stuff, right? All from something as simple as getting poked by a needle. But it’s definitely more than that.

What Are the Main Benefits of Acupuncture?

Acupuncture has digestive, emotional, ENT, gynecological, musculoskeletal, neurological, respiratory, and many other benefits for your body.

Below are just some of the plethora of benefits of acupuncture.

Reduced Back Pain and Neck Tension

Acupuncture provides drug-free pain relief for back pain and neck tension. And boy, do we need this in our day and age. We spend most of our time hunched over on a computer, and modern medical science offers a “pill for everything” solution. Acupuncture is just the solution for back and neck pain that we need.

Reduced Eye Strain

Going back to that computer of yours, you’re staring at it right now! Apart from offering relief from eye strain caused by neck pain, acupuncture treats eye problems such as short-sightedness, long-sightedness, color blindness, night blindness, lazy eye, etc.

Digestive Relief

Have issues with digestion? Good news! Acupuncture can effectively regulate your digestive system. And since digestive health has a strong effect on overall health, you're bound to experience a boost in your health.

Cold Relief and Boosted Immunity

Acupuncture can reduce the duration of a cold and lessen your feeling of misery during the flu. It can also help fight off pathogens, thereby boosting your body's immunity.

Reduced Stress

One thing we all have in common that we don’t want is stress. Stress is one of the primary reasons people seek out acupuncture.

Acupuncture has been proven to lessen the effect of stress hormones and moderate your mood. This has the double effect of decreasing your anxiety while cranking up your overall feelings of happiness.

Relief from Headaches

I think we can all agree that headaches are just the worst. They can kill your day (or night). Recent studies demonstrated that acupuncture could reduce migraines for a long period of time.

The best part is that acupuncture is a drug-free solution to your headache.

While there are many more benefits to acupuncture, it’s fair to say that these should be enough for the common reader to seriously consider acupuncture as a treatment option in the future.

How Long Do the Effects of Acupuncture Last?

The answer to this is really simple: It depends. Okay, maybe that's not so simple. Here's the explanation.

Everyone is hardwired in different ways, so it's hard to generalize how long the effect of acupuncture is on each person. Like other treatments, the efficacy and length of the effect of acupuncture depend upon your symptoms and medical history. For example, if you have severe symptoms, the chances are that you might not experience as long-lasting a relief as someone with less severe symptoms. That is because people who experience a greater deal of pain will probably require more than one form of treatment to see a positive effect.

However, that does not always mean patients with fewer or less severe symptoms will achieve immediate and long-lasting results. Why? Well, think about it this way: the body is going through a lot during acupuncture, and if you're new to it, it's something your body is going to take some time responding to.

See how your body responds to acupuncture treatment. Try a few sessions, test things out, listen to your body, and get a feel for what it wants. It will, more than likely respond positively with acupuncture.

How Often Should Acupuncture Be Done?

Once again, not a simple answer. This is something you will have to personalize according to your body’s needs.

Rule of thumb is usually this: if you’re just starting out or suffering from an acute condition, you’re going to need more treatments within a shorter span of time between each other. This will most likely be one to two sessions a week for the first four weeks.

The frequency of your visits will lessen as you begin to experience improvements in your health.

When determining how many sessions you need, you will have to use something called the transition phase. Here’s how it works. As you begin to get better, you will spread out your sessions more and more. But any sort of backtracking in your progress will be an indication that the sessions are too widely spaced. And based on this, you will have to adjust accordingly.

Does Acupuncture Release Toxins?

Simple answer: yes. In fact, here are three detox points used in acupuncture.

Three Yin Crossing

This detox point is located right above the inner ankle bone. This point stimulates proper blood flow throughout the body and helps in reducing pain in the back and knee, dizziness, and menstrual pain.

Shu Mansion

This detox point is located right below the collarbone. Adding pressure on it helps regulate your kidneys (which is a key organ in the detoxing process). It also addresses breathing problems.

Union Valley

This point is found between the thumb and index finger. Stimulating this point helps get rid of toxins, treats acne, allergy, and many other skin disorders. It also helps with managing eye problems, toothaches, and fever.

Does Acupuncture Help with Sports Injury?

YES!

In fact, a recent study demonstrated that acupuncture can help relieve short-term pain, proving to be a useful and non-invasive treatment for sports injuries such as hernias, ganglion cysts, femoral acetabular impingement, and lateral meniscus rupture.

Given its many potential benefits, including those of relieving neck and back pain, it comes as no surprise that acupuncture can be a solution to sports-related injuries.

By offering pain relief, inflammation reduction, and trigger-point release, acupuncture is truly a drug-free and non-invasive solution to look into next time you suffer from a sports injury. But let's keep our fingers crossed, so you don't have to go through one.