The Only Needle You Should Be Saying “YOLO” To
Acupuncture In a Nutshell
Of all the tools that Chinese medicine has to offer, acupuncture is the most well known tool here in the western world! In fact, many insurance plans now cover acupuncture. From reducing chronic pain to helping with digestive discomforts, acupuncture is becoming more commonly sought out for feeling better without side effects. We all have dreams to accomplish with the one life we have. Well, if YOLO really is the case, why not make it an effort to live your best life and feel well while doing that?
Despite the growing popularity of acupuncture, many people don’t know and or understand the mechanism behind how acupuncture works and why it’s so effective. We hope this article helps to paint a clearer picture.
How Acupuncture Helps Optimize Circulation — A tool to guide circulation to the areas in need
In order to fully understand how acupuncture works, you need to understand the system it is working on — It’s all about circulation (link to article)!
Key Concepts:
Good circulation is the key to health. Chinese medicine optimizes the flow of circulation in the body to help you make the most out of your internal healing resources.
Acupuncture is one of the tools to help guide circulation to the areas in need.
What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is one part Chinese medicine diagnosis and one part needle. Chinese medicine takes your body’s signs and signals and translates it into an individualized Chinese medicine diagnosis. Everyone has an individual health picture that highlights which areas need better circulation. That is where acupuncture comes in. Acupuncture utilizes needles to help guide circulation to those areas in need.
How Does Acupuncture Guide Circulation to Areas in Need? — Pathways
The founders of Chinese medicine observed that the body systems were interconnected in many ways. Slowly over time, they mapped out acupuncture points and meridians (pathways of circulation throughout the body) that correspond to different organ functions as well as musculoskeletal pathways. For example, they found that a point on the leg when stimulated greatly helps with digestive functioning. Over a few thousand years, they developed more precise tools to help the body direct better circulation to the areas that need help. That is how acupuncture came to be.
In our modern day, extremely thin, sterile, one-time use needles are used to help direct circulation. The needles stimulate more efficient nerve impulses/conduction and utilize pathways to focus the body’s resources to heal areas in need.
How Are Acupuncture Points Chosen? — Local vs. Distal
One of the most popular questions we get asked is something along the lines of “If I’m suffering from headaches, why are you needling my hands and feet?” With various pathways, there are many options to help guide circulation to a specific area. In most acupuncture treatments, both local and distal points are used.
Combining both local and distal points is the real gem in Chinese Medicine.
It helps bring circulation to the local area or organ system in need and also activates resources from other areas of the body to send it to the area of focus or discomfort. Going back to the headache question, Chinese medicine sees pain as a sign of poor circulation, thus a headache means that circulation in the head is poor. A lot of important acupuncture points near the hands and feet are part of pathways that connect to and from the head. By using these points, it helps to get circulation moving to and from the head region, thus resolving the throb or pain.
Acupuncture as a Tool for Health
Again, Chinese medicine translates the body’s signs and signals. Acupuncture is one of the tools that addresses these messages. An acupuncture session yields both immediate and long term effects.
As we all know, healing takes time. The great thing is that acupuncture helps increase healing efficiency and accuracy with no side effects. That is why it takes on average 6 treatments. Each acupuncture treatment builds on the previous treatment by encouraging Neuroplasticity. The treatments nudge your body and brain to reprogram itself to strengthen connections that promote blood flow. Depending on your body’s current condition, someone who is weaker overall will require more time as they have less internal resources to tap into.
The beauty of a medicine that really emphasizes preventative measures no matter how big or small the problem, is that there is always something that can be improved and optimized. From helping someone recover walking functions due to a stroke to a weekend warrior recovering from a hard workout session at a gym, getting that extra boost to help with recovery can help you stay on track with fitness goals. That is why many athletes and celebrities add acupuncture to their weekly routines. Although we do not know whether famous rapper Drake has added acupuncture to his routine, we are sure he will appreciate our take on his Motto.
TLDR:
Why live at 70% when you can live at 100%. This is the only needle that you should be saying “YOLO” to. Afterall, YOLO = YOU ONLY LIVE OPTIMALLY.
And we bout it everyday, every day, every day,
like we needling on the table, doctor, we don’t really play.
Every day, every day, **** what anybody say
you only live optimally: that’s the motto, doctor, YOLO
For the engineers and mathematicians out there, here is another summary of Acupuncture!
Thanks for reading!
XOXO Steph
Thanks for reading! I am an Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine Practitioner with a clinic in San Francisco. Learn more about what I do and see more of my writing at https://www.stephaniewuacupuncture.com.
The information in this blog is not medical advice and not a substitute for professional advice or treatment. Please consult a physician or healthcare professional.
