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What are the benefits of Acupuncture ?

benefits of Acupuncture
Benefits of Acupuncture

The common conversation

“You can have Acupuncture for your illness?”

“Oh, my god. It is painful with needles”

This is one of the common conversation when someone is asked to perform acupuncture for treatment.  In general, people fear that inserting the acupuncture needle is painful without knowing the benefit of acupuncture.

The General Meaning of Acupuncture

The word acupuncture is made up of two words “acu” means sharp and “puncture ” means pricking. Hence the literal meaning of acupuncture is sharp pricking.  Acupuncture is one of the component of Traditional Chinese Medicine which has been practiced in China for thousand of years and has spread throughout the world in short duration. The spreading of acupuncture is mostly due to its efficiency and availability for treating the disease.

Although acupuncture shows good result for treating many kinds of disease, most of the people fear more of  needles than that of the benefits of acupuncture. In fact, the needles used in acupuncture are very thin. In fact, they are 14 times thin than that of standard blood drawing needles. So, now you can think when you are drawing the blood next time during your doctor visit.

Benefits of acupuncture:

Manage pain.

Acupuncture is mostly used for managing pain, either acute or chronic type of pain. The efficiency of acupuncture in managing the pain is comparable with many western drugs. The mechanism acupuncture in our body is to stimulate the release chemical or hormones in the brain which have the property of natural opiates. Moreover, also help to stimulate the production of endorphin hormone in the brain, which is also a pain relieving substance.

Relieve stress

Acupuncture helps to decrease stress by releasing natural pain killer known as endorphin in our brain. Also, acupuncture improves the circulation in our body hence increasing the amount of oxygenated blood. Stress-induced elevations of sympathetic NPY pathway & HPA axis hormones are also blocked by using acupuncture. Acupuncture stimulates the Nervous System and release neurochemical messenger molecules which brings some biochemical changes that influence the homeostatic mechanisms of the body and promotes emotional & physical well being.

Increase immunity

This is one of the major benefits of acupuncture. Acupuncture helps to increase the immunity of our body, hence prevents our body from the attack of external pathogens and helps to increase the healing capacity of our body during various conditions like infection , allergies .etc. The mechanism acupuncture works in improving the immunity is by stimulating the autonomic nervous system. Also acupuncture increases the level of interferon in our body. So, Regular acupuncture therapy is beneficial in treating various disease like Rheumatoid arthritis, Systemic Lupus erythematus, allergies, asthma, common cold.

Overall wellbeing

Acupuncture helps in the normalizing the flow of vital energy in our body. “Qi” is the vital energy in our body which helps for overall well being. The vital energy has the function of maintaining normal circulation of blood and nutrients in our body; maintaining the normal body temperature, protect the body from external pathogens and maintain the proper metabolism of body. Any imbalance in the function of “Qi” causes disease. Hence, acupuncture plays important role for overall well being of our body.

Improving the quality of life

Acupuncture can help in patients Stroke, cancer to improve the quality of life. While talking about the stroke patient acupuncture helps to promote the function of part that has been affected with stroke, improves sleep, helps to clear speech, improve bladder and bowel habit, relieve stress and many more. Also in cancer patients it helps to relieve stress, cure pain, and improve sleep. There are many more other conditions where acupuncture can be beneficial for improving the quality of life.

The above are the some of the most common major five benefits of acupuncture. However the benefits cannot be limited only to five points. There are still more hundreds of benefits to be explained which I will discuss in some other articles.

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Dr. Ishwar Gyawali is Consultant Acupuncturist and Ayurveda Physician from Kathmandu, Nepal. He had completed BAMS (Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery), a five and half year course on Ayurveda Medicine from Kirtipur Campus affiliated to Tribhuvan University ,Institute Of Medicine, Nepal under scholarship in 2011. He had completed his MD in TCM from Nanjing University Of Chinese Medicine in 2016 under scholarship of Ministry of Education, Nepal. With an experience of Serving for Government of Nepal for 2 years and private practise for more than 5 years, he has sound knowledge in Ayurveda as well as Chinese Medicine. He is a registered Doctor in NAMC (Nepal Ayurveda Medical Council ) both as a physician as well as TCM/Acupuncture Specialist.