Herbal medicine and acupuncture are two of the five treatment branches of Chinese medicine. Do they go separately or can you have them together? Chinese Medicine Doctor, Marie Hopkinson explains why you want to have herbs with your acupuncture.
In my experience, acupuncture is much more well known than other aspects of Chinese medicine like herbs. It seems people associate acupuncture with the treatment of musculoskeletal issues much more readily than herbal medicine.
For myself, if I get a back pain, over the years I would always go to herbs first. Mostly because of the convenience. While it’s actually not as hard as you might think to needle yourself, my main reason is you don’t have to stop or lie down to have herbs! There are plenty of times I’ve used both, but actually if I have pain, I would rarely just use acupuncture alone.
So why would you want to do them both together at the same time?
Essentially acupuncture benefits your body primarily by stimulating blood flow to the areas your body needs to heal. This can be done with local needling – that is, your practitioner or doctor of Chinese medicine will insert the needles near the painful areas are directly; or it can be done with distal points. Distal points means acupuncture points that affect the painful area but no needles are done at the site of the pain. Usually through a combination of points, it might be a point on your hand, wrist and ankle area that treats the shoulder for instance. Either way, during the treatment you will most likely feel something in the affected area. That feeling is the stimulation of blood flow – and energy of the blood if you like, going to that place. Often you’ll feel instantaneous effects with acupuncture. However, there are three main reasons why taking your personalized formula of Chinese herbal medicine will put your acupuncture to the next level:
- Acupuncture can only take the blood that you have already in your system to the area.
It cant conjure up any better quality blood in the first few days of having treatments. Perhaps over a course of treatments and certainly over several months of regular treatments we can see physiological changes in the body that the quality of a persons Blood (or Xue in Chinese medicine) has improved.
Taking herbs affects your physiology directly by putting substance into your body that it needs. Sometimes your body needs to purge toxic obstructions…like if your digestion is blocked and you have constipation, bloating and fullness or pain in the abdomen then herbs might aid your body to re-establish it’s digestive functionality, which then may enable it to start absorbing nutrients at a better rate, once the waste is moving through like it should. This will ultimately impact on the quality of nutrition in your body as a whole.
Some herbal formulas work like a direct tonic to your body, putting substance into you that your body requires to function more optimally.
With lots of musculoskeletal treatments, we use a combination of pungent and sour herbs that promote sweating to moisturize the muscles, at the same time sour herbs that contain that moisture (so your not actually sweating, but your muscles will get more flexible).
Any physical treatments you do when your taking herbs will be more effective than doing acupuncture alone.
2. Taking herbs increases the cost effectiveness of the treatment. By taking herbs, most patients I see for musculoskeletal pain problems end up needing a lot less treatments. When I see patients for acupuncture alone, they will usually need 2-3 treatments a week for something acute. When you are taking herbs you can often do 1 or 2 treatments a week. Mostly I would see patients 2x in the first week if the pain was debilitating (like a back pain where you can hardly walk), but most of the time with herbs you can be seen once a week or fortnight. Certainly for chronic conditions like arthritis, chronic back pain fortnightly is often frequent enough.
Taking herbs ususally saves patients money through getting better and back to the things you love faster than acupuncture alone, and saves you money by minimizing the time required to attend a lot of acupuncture appointments.
3. Taking herbs is like taking your acupuncture doctor home with you…you don’t need someone
to do physical treatments on you each day to feel relief . For acute pain cases, the dosage can be varied according to pain and response to treatment.
It’s important to know that Chinese herbal medicine dosen’t work by “treating” the problem as such…it’s treating whats’ wrong with your body’s function. When our body functions perfectly, we wont have any health problems at all.
The herbs that are used for musculoskeletal disorders will vary considerably, from patient to patient. We don’t give herbs for “back pain” or “shoulder pain” but we use herbs for the disharmony your body is in, which has then lead to that flare up of pain.
Most of the diagnosis to determine how your body has become dysfunctional or in disharmony comes from your pulse diagnosis.
To make an enquiry about your individual situation, email [email protected], or book online via CONTACT US above.
NOTICE: this information is provided in public interest of keeping people healthy as possible. Common sense should always be applied. Too much of anything can be hazardous to health. This information is not intended as a substitute for medical advice or diagnosis by a health practitioner. If you have a health condition, you should check with your health care practitioner before using foods as medicine treatments, if you are in any way unsure about the suitability of the food agents, herbs or recipies for your body. In an medical emergency always contact emergency services, call 000 in Australia.
This article is written by Marie Hopkinson, the Chinese Herbalist & Acupuncturist at Metro Health and Medicine in North Perth. Marie is available for consultation by calling 1300 132 830 or email [email protected]