Seven years of practicing acupuncture has shown us a couple of things. (Here's a start.)
- You can get fantastic results without the twanging of new age music and scented candles. (We have candles, but the new age stuff is not on our playlist.)
- You can get awesome results without the practitioner taking their shoes off to better balance the Chi of the room.
- You can get phenomenal results for headaches without stabbing an 8-inch needle through one's ear. (That Discovery Channel is scary!)
- 97% Success rate for people with seasonal allergies. (Pretty good, huh?)
- Acupuncture only helps with weight loss if you are willing to try to lose weight. (So please don't get acupuncture and continue to eat pizzas and chocolate on a daily basis.)
We're not going to give you a drawn out history lesson, but it is important to know that acupuncture has been around for 2500 years. The basis is simple: we have internal organs that have to talk to other organs in order to do their job. Stomach must churn food to prepare the pancreas to excrete bicarbonate to help neutralize bile to the small intestine at the same time our liver dumps bile into the duodenum to break down the fat we just ate. Okay, everything is working on the inside together, and the Chinese believed that there must be a correlation on the outside to the organs on the inside. This correlation of the organs on the inside to certain "groupings" of stimulatory points on the outside is know as "meridians." Honestly, more and more evidence-based research is being done in the scientific realm that brings more clout to acupuncture than ever before.
The American Academy of Medical Acupuncture has compiled an entire list of what's been proven clinically (double-blind studies) as a complementary therapy. It has also been proven that stimulation of acupuncture points dramatically increases the body's production of natural opiates (endorphins and enkephalins). These are pain killing hormones that our brain makes to help us cope with pain! Need we say more? If you are afraid of needles, fear not! We do primarily use needles, but we also utilize an acupuncture laser (no needles), mini-acupuncture Band-Aids (smallest needle on the market), and/or electronic stimulation acupuncture. So, whatever your ailment, acupuncture as a complementary treatment may be the answer you are searching for.
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