Introduction to Five Branches of Chinese Medicine

Welcome to Natural Health Corner. This is a new monthly column dedicated to presenting ideas on various health topics. Since I’m a licensed acupuncturist and practitioner of Oriental Medicine, this will mostly be coming through the lens of Chinese Medicine. My hope is that there is something in here that may lead you toward a better course of health.

Introduction to Something Different

To start us off this month, I wanted to introduce you to one of the oldest healing practices in the world. Acupuncture grabbed my attention almost twenty years ago, when I was pre-med in college, studying Western medicine en route to becoming a physician. After taking a break for a semester and traveling throughout the world for several months, I realized that what I was learning at home was not the only perspective on medicine. For those of you who have left home to explore a foreign place, even if it’s just a couple hours north on I-89, you may understand what it’s like to look at what you know from another angle. This is how I felt when observing other cultures, especially in relation to health care.

After graduating college with a pre-med degree, I decided to pursue Chinese Medicine and soon moved to China to live for a year. I studied the language and medicine, taught English, and soaked in the culture. I saw how Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine were being used effectively together. Pharmaceuticals, surgery, acupuncture, herbs, massage were all being used cooperatively to manage the patients’ concerns. I realized that we’re limiting how we manage our common health challenges by not thinking about how our bodies are cared for in other places, like China, and even how they’ve been cared for in the past.

One of Five Branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Though acupuncture has been used for thousands of years in China and other Asian countries, it caught our attention in the U.S. in 1971, when New York Times reporter James Reston wrote about how doctors in China had used needles to ease his pain after surgery. Since then, acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) continues to be a growing field of medicine in our country. According to the 2007 National Health Interview Survey, an estimated 3.1 million U.S. adults and 150,000 children had used acupuncture in the previous year. Between 2002 and 2007, acupuncture use among adults increased by approximately 1 million people. Acupuncture is considered one of five branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine, including herbal medicine, massage, nutrition, and exercise. We will talk about these other branches in future months here.

Acupuncture Treats Most Illness

People often ask, “Can acupuncture treat …?” The answer is almost always “yes.” If you consider that acupuncture has been used for thousands of years as a major part of medical care for a large portion of the world’s population, you can imagine that it has a long history of use treating most health concerns. In modern times, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization has recognized acupuncture as effective for a lengthy list of medical problems. To give you a sense of my practice, the most common reasons that people seek acupuncture are to manage pain for any reason, headaches, circulatory problems, gastrointestinal problems, immune system support, fertility, pregnancy and menopausal support, insomnia, anxiety and tension, and addiction.

Does Acupuncture Hurt

Another common question is, “Does acupuncture hurt?” The needles that are used are extremely thin, stainless steel, about the diameter of a few strands of hair. The sensations that may be felt have been described as pressure, a dull sensation, warmth, a dispersing feeling, or a tiny prick. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that needles be sterile, nontoxic, and labeled for single use by qualified practitioners only. You shouldn’t be hesitant to consider acupuncture as a therapy to help manage the various health conditions that arise.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions related to what you may be learning at Natural Health Corner at josh@integrativeaom.com.  In the case of this month’s information, feel free to contact me as well to sample acupuncture.

“The data in support of acupuncture is as strong as those for many accepted Western medical therapies. One of the advantages of acupuncture is that the incidence of adverse effects is substantially lower than that of many drugs and other accepted medical procedures used for the same conditions.”

The National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on Acupuncture, 1997