Julie Jiayu Zhang is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist in Boulder, CO, specializing in pain management, sports medicine, internal medicine and woman’s health.
Acupuncture is one of the oldest and most widely used healing systems in the world. It has clearly recorded history of 2000 years. Some claims that acupuncture has been practiced in China for 4000 years. It was believed that practice of acupuncture began during Stone Age. As acupuncture developed, bronze, gold and silver needles were used instead of stone. Most acupuncturist use stainless steel needles now.
Acupuncture is a method of encouraging the body to promote natural healing and harmony by inserting tiny sterile needles at particular points along the meridians to access Qi (life energy) in order to help it flow more freely and strongly. Just like the old Chinese saying goes, “Where there is pain, there is no free-flow; where there is free-flow, there is no pain.”
Numerous studies have shown that acupuncture, by sticking needles into certain points, affects nervous system and stimulates body’s production of natural painkilling chemicals, such as endorphins, and it furthermore triggers the release of certain neurotransmitters and neural hormones including serotonin and dopamine. Acupuncture can also block the transmission of pain impulses from parts of the body to central nervous system.
Acupuncture works holistically with body, mind and emotion, strengthening and balancing energy. It improves circulation and allows the body to heal itself more quickly and completely. It’s highly effective not only as preventative medicine, but also as a drug free treatment for many signs and symptoms. When treating a complaint, the goal is to treat the whole body comprehensively, not just an isolated symptom; acupuncture seeks for the underlying cause of the original complaint and eliminates the condition at its root source.
Unlike needles used for injections, acupuncture needles are extremely thin, smooth, painless. They are solid and do not remove tissue as would occur with a hypodermic needle.
The date in support of acupuncture is as strong as that for many accepted western medical therapies……One of the advantages of acupuncture is that the incidence of adverse effects is substantially lower that that of many drugs or other accepted medical procedures used for the same conditions.”—1997 National Institute of Health