1. Acupuncture treats your whole body
Acupuncture is a holistic approach to medicine, meaning it isn’t directed toward a particular disease or condition. It works instead by activating the body’s self-healing ability. This is why acupuncture can address everything from digestive systems, to back pain, to the side effects of chemotherapy.
When you get an acupuncture treatment for back pain, your back pain will go away but it’s also likely that you’ll see improvements in other areas. The headaches you’ve had for the last five years may get better, you may have more energy, you may be better able to handle stress, and you may even sleep better.
2. ACUPUNCTURE CURES DISEASE
According to Webster’s Dictionary a cure is: something that stops a disease and makes someone healthy again. Acupuncture, unlike most drugs, has the potential to cure disease. How? As I mentioned above, acupuncture stimulates the body’s self-healing mechanisms and the body’s ability to heal itself far surpasses anything western medicine has to offer.
The discovery of antibiotics is certainly one of the greatest achievements of medicine (though not without problems, as the recent phenomenon of antibiotic resistance indicates.) However, the body is capable of spontaneously healing wounds, regenerating tissue, neutralizing toxins, and keeping cancer cells at bay.
3. ACUPUNCTURE PREVENTS DISEASE
Acupuncture and the other branches of Chinese medicine (nutrition & herbal therapies) restore homeostasis and keep the body functioning at an optimal level. When the body is functioning at an optimal level, it is far less likely to get sick, and far more likely to recover quickly when it does get sick. Another way to put it is that, acupuncture is an effective method of healthcare.
Healthcare, which may be defined as a method of promoting and maintaining health, is not the focus of our current medical system. A more accurate term for the focus of Western medicine would be disease management. Disease management is important and we certainly need it in the modern world. Yet it is a mistake to confuse disease management with healthcare. They aren’t the same thing at all.
4. Acupuncture makes your life better
The goal of Chinese medicine is to improve your quality of life and keep you healthy right up until the end. This means you’re rock climbing, skiing, playing with your grandchildren, or doing whatever else you enjoy until you pass away in your sleep at a ripe old age.
Western medicine, on the other hand, is focused on the treatment of serious, life-threatening conditions. It is an unsurpassed intervention for trauma and acute emergencies. Doctors can achieve almost miraculous feats to keep people alive, including reattaching severed limbs and literally bringing people back from the dead. So we are certainly not “against” Western medicine. However, if you were to develop type 2 diabetes, you should begin by changing your diet and receiving acupuncture treatments to reverse the development of the disease. Not taking medications that will just help you control the symptoms while you continue to become sicker.
5. Acupuncture won’t kill you or make you sick
“First, do no harm” this is one of the principals of medical ethics that students are taught in medical school. Another way to state this principle is, “given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good.” Somewhere along the way this important principal got swept under the rug. While western medicine has made tremendous contributions to disease management, it has also proven to be dangerous to our health as well. We may have the most advanced system in the world, but the US is far behind most other industrialized countries when it comes to health.
Hopefully this blog post has helped you to understand the power of acupuncture and Chinese medicine and its relevance as a genuine system of healthcare. When it comes to your health only YOU can be held accountable for being the healthiest version of yourself. You have to take control and take care of your body as no one else is going to do it for you.