WHAT IS ACUPUNCTURE?
Chinese Medicine recognizes that your life force or "chi" flows along pathways called meridians. When the flow of your chi is impeded or deficient, illness inevitably occurs. Acupuncture stimulates the chi, removing impediments and enhancing its flow, allowing you to experience greater health and happiness.
WHAT IS FIVE ELEMENT ACUPUNCTURE?
Five-element acupuncture is unique because it provides more than symptomatic relief. Five-element acupuncture looks for the root cause of your pain, disease or imbalance. It is not just the illness that is treated, but the whole person. Working in harmony with the laws of nature, the five-element acupuncturist stimulates your body's own natural healing response and brings about balance at a deep level.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF ACUPUNCTURE?
Benefits of acupuncture include:
- Recovery or improvement from any illness that is not an emergency situation
- A state of well-being: relaxed and feeling "more yourself"
- Increased ability to cope with the demands of life
- Greatly reduces stress
- Being sick less often and recovering more quickly
- Improvement of vitality and stamina
- Relationships with others improving
- Pain reduction
WHAT HAPPENS IN THE INITIAL TREATMENT?
Your first visit to a Classical Five-Element acupuncturist is approximately two hours long and includes an interview and treatment. The interview will cover your medical history, current reason for your visit and a brief personal history. This is a time for me to get to know you and determine what you need on all levels: body, mind and spirit.
I will take your pulses and learn about the state of your chi and discover any energy blocks. Then I will insert hair-fine sterile needles at specific points along these meridians to stimulate the chi, removing any impediments and enhancing your own natural flow.
HOW OFTEN DO YOU NEED TO GET TREATED?
Acupuncture works best when done consistently until you are feeling better. This will vary depending on the duration and severity of your problem and the lifestyle and other factors that are contributing to it. Typically, treatments are given once a week for 4 to 8 weeks and then decreased to 2 weeks, 3 weeks and monthly as healing progress is made.
MAINTENANCE
When health and balance have been restored, it is recommended that you come in at least seasonally for maintenance. Your pulses will often reveal if anything is going wrong even before it manifests as symptoms. In fact, symptoms are usually the last thing to manifest.
HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE HEALING PROCESS?
Adequate amounts of water, good healthy food, regular exercise and sufficient rest will extend the benefits of your treatment and enrich your life.
Meditation, T'ai Chi and yoga can help you maintain a relaxed state of mind.
To experience the fullest healing of any condition requires a commitment to yourself to receive treatment and make positive changes in your life. Regular treatment will help you make these necessary changes as you begin a new path to improved health and well being.
WHAT DOES ACUPUNCTURE TREAT ?
When Dr.Carter is asked such a question, it is usually about specific clinical conditions like "asthma" or "high blood pressure". Acupuncture, within the framework of Classical Oriental Medicine, however, focuses primarily on the person and secondarily on the illness.
To fully understand this, you have to turn your thinking on its head a bit. As a Classical Acupuncturist, Dr. Carter views your symptoms (the reason you are coming for treatment) as a "branch" expression of an underlying or "root" imbalance.
Your practitioner uses the diagnostic principles and systems of Chinese Medicine to evaluate your root imbalance. (Dr. Carter is one of those practitioners who consider this to be a pattern of disharmony that is more at the constitutional than symptomatic level.)
A treatment program is then tailored to address the two aspects of your circumstance, the root and the branch. Although there are situations where the symptoms are so extreme, they must be the exclusive focus of the treatment to start, it is far more common to receive root and branch treatment in the same session.
In most cases, root imbalance diagnosis enables your practitioner to offer appropriate and meaningful lifestyle suggestions in addition to an acupuncture treatment.
One interesting feature of this approach is that different root imbalances can produce the same symptoms or patient complaints. So, for example, five patients with asthma may all present themselves with the same symptoms or western medical diagnosis.
Yet Classical Chinese Medical diagnosis may reveal five distinct root imbalances hiding behind the symptomatic expression. These five people would all be treated very differently despite the fact that the conditions for which they seek treatment are all seemingly the same.
So what about specific conditions that acupuncture treats?
Because Acupuncture treats the whole person, it has something to offer almost every condition. Having said that, some conditions respond readily to acupuncture treatment and some are notoriously difficult to treat.
In many cases, acupuncture can bring about a complete resolution of symptoms and their underlying causes. In others, it is an effective management strategy. Of course, in cases of life-threatening trauma and emergency conditions, your first visit should always be to the hospital.
One common perception is that acupuncture is mainly useful in the management of pain. This is completely untrue. Firstly, with regard to pain, Classical Acupuncture can often resolve the pain (rather than merely manage it). Secondly, Classical Acupuncture and Chinese medicine have a range of application that is far broader than pain conditions. For example, acupuncturists routinely and successfully treat patients whose main complaints are related to immune and/or endocrine dysfunction.
Conditions and circumstances for which people commonly find acupuncture to be effective.
- GENERAL CONDITIONS: Asthma, Allergies, Sinusitis, Headaches, TMJ, Back Pain, Sciatica, Musculoskeletal Problems, Insomnia, Anxiety, Dizziness, Weight Issues, Indigestion, Constipation, High Blood Pressure, Depression.
- GENERAL DISEASES: Addictions, Cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
- WOMEN'S HEALTH: Menstrual Irregularities, Menopause, Conception Difficulties, Hormonal Imbalance, Infertility, Pregnancy, Childbirth, Lactation Difficulties, Postpartum, Ovarian and Uterine Problems.
- MEN'S HEALTH: Prostate problems, Infertility, Impotence.
- PEDIATRICS: Asthma, Cough, Digestive Problems, Behavioral Problems, Ear Infections, Sleep Problems.
- PREVENTIVE HEALTH: Disease Prevention, Stress Management, Wellness, Seasonal Attunement.
- SUPPORTIVE HEALTH: Post-Operative Recovery, Palliative Care.
Classical Acupuncture dates back some 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest forms of medicine and the world's largest drug-free health care system. What was once seen as a last resort, it is increasingly recognized as a preventative step as people take more responsibility for their own physical, mental and emotional health. The overall therapeutic effects of Acupuncture are one of its greatest strengths. As it treats the whole person, most people report a greatly improved quality of life and a sense of well-being. Hence the frequent comment, "I'm feeling more myself", which often refers to such things as increased energy and vitality, greater enjoyment of life, greater confidence and a renewed sense of life purpose, of being alive.