In this episode we take on the question of “Do I have to believe in acupuncture for it to work?”
Today’s Everyday Acupuncture Podcast question is answered by Stacey Whitcomb of the Shift Clinic, in Bellingham, WA.
This is Stacy I’m a licensed acupuncturist and the host of the AcuSprout podcast.
I don’t believe in acupuncture. This one. I hear every once in a while, and sometimes even from a patient as I’m doing acupuncture and because it’s not my job to convince anyone that it does work. I usually just reply. That’s okay. You don’t have to believe in it for it to work acupuncture. Isn’t a religion.
It’s it’s not the big bang theory. It isn’t Santa Claus and it’s not magic. It’s a medicine. That’s two to 5,000 years old. It worked back then and it works now whether you believe in it or not. So when someone tells me that they don’t believe in acupuncture, I always wanna ask them if they believe in anesthesiology, because most people I know would never look an anesthetist in the eye and say, I don’t believe in anesthesiology.
I think the anesthesiologist would have a similar reply as mine. Mm-hmm yep. That’s. 90 night, but don’t you think anesthesiology is weird. Someone shoots stuff into your veins and you go to sleep and you feel no pain when you wake up and you don’t remember anything. do you know how that worked?
Here’s the web MD’s explanation of anesthesiology general anesthesia works by interrupting nerve signals in your brain and body. Prevents your brain from processing pain and from remembering what happened during the surgery. So guess what? Acupuncture affects the body similarly, and then some acupuncture needles also interrupt nerve signals in your brain and body.
They help balance the body’s reaction to pain and inflammation. They regulate hormones, calm the nervous system and help your body heal. But let me clarify. I would not go to an acupuncturist in lieu of anesthesiology. So that wasn’t my point here, but I definitely would use it postoperatively to reduce swelling, inflammation, and pain and to speed healing.
The world health organization was formed in 1948 to coordinate international health within the United nations. And they set standards for governments and large organizations in order to improve the health of global citizens.
Current. The world health organization now recommends acupuncture for over 100 conditions.
Acupuncture has been scientifically proven to be an effective treatment option. And that includes adverse reactions to radiotherapy and chemotherapy allergic rhinitis, biliary concolic depression, dysentery dyspenia epi Astria facial pain, headache, hypertension, hypertension, induction of labor, knee pain, leukopenia, low back pain, malposition of the fetus.
Morning sickness, nausea, vomit, neck pain, pain. Inden per arthritis of the shoulder, postoperative pain, renal colic, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica sprain stroke, and tennis elbow. Oh, and that long haul COVID that is keeping you from smelling your food. That ailment that Western medicine doesn’t have a cure for.
I’ve successfully treated that using acupuncture in a custom herbal formula. And I imagine that that patient didn’t believe in acupuncture when she first came to see me, but now she does. So you may not believe in it because you don’t know how it works or because it’s not really part of our native social construct of medicine, but when was the last time you asked how ibuprofen knows that that pain is in your ankle or.
How about that blue pill that can cause erection.
Do you know how that works?
