Description

What is acupuncture? It is a form of holistic healthcare that isused to prevent and treat certain diseases as well as relieve painand anesthetize patients for surgery. Research shows that thisbegan in China and has been practiced for more than 5,000 years.

The earliest account of this is found in the book called NeiJing which in English means the Yellow Emperor's Classic ofInternal Medicine. The contents of this book date somewhere around200 BC. Back then, they did not use metal needles and instead usedthose made out of stone, moxibustion and herbs to treat apatient.

Acupuncture prevents and treats diseases by inserting very fineneedles into the skin specifically at the anatomic points of thebody.

The principle behind this concept is that illnesses occurbecause there is an imbalance in your life force otherwise known asQi. It is believed that this flows in 14 channels in the human bodyknown as meridians which branch out to bodily organs and functions.If there is a blockage or obstruction in any of them, this is whenyou succumb to a disease or an illness.

The imbalance in the Qi may go one way or the other because ofYin and Yang. The person can only be normal if there is harmonybetween the two which is what acupuncture is trying to achieve.This can only be restored by stimulating these acupuncture pointsso your Qi can be adjusted, balanced and harmonized.

Apart from using needles, practitioners also use friction, heat,impulses of electromagnetic energy and pressure to stimulate thesepoints in order to balance the movement of energy in the body toreduce one's health.

An example of this is sonopuncture where an ultrasound devicethat transmits sound waves is applied to these points in the body.Some use a tuning fork and other vibration devices.

Acupressure is another example and here, the fingers are used torelive the pain. This can be used by itself or with other manualhealing techniques.