Learn More About Acupuncture

The question I get most frequently as an acupuncturist is “What can you do for X?” – “What can you do for a headache?” “What can you do for my knee pain?” “What can you do for anxiety?” – Unlike Western medicine, my answer is always the same: a 30-40 minute interview, make a diagnosis according to the state of qi and blood, then treat according to the diagnosed qi and/or blood disorder. I don’t actually treat any of the problems that my patients come to see me for, I only treat the underlying disorders of qi and blood that is giving rise to their symptoms. For me a disease is a symptom that tells me how qi and blood is not flowing properly in the patient. For example, diabetes is not a diagnosis for me, it is a symptom of a disorder of qi and blood to which I could assign one or a combination of 5-6 patterns of qi and blood disharmony depending on how the specific symptoms of diabetes is experienced by the patient and the other signs and symptoms the patient has. There is an old saying in Chinese medicine: same disease, different treatment; different disease, same treatment. Meaning I could have 2 patients with diabetes come see me and they will receive different treatments because their qi and blood disharmony diagnosis is different. I could also have 2 patients come see me one with diabetes, one with fibromyalgia whom I would give the same, or very similar, treatments to because their diagnosis according to qi and blood are the same.

So what is qi and blood? Blood you probably think you know, it’s red, pumped around the body by the heart, and flows in the veins. However, from an Eastern medical perspective, blood is also a yin, or a substantive, form of qi. The blood follows the movement of qi and nourishes it. Which leaves us the question what is qi? The Chinese word “qi” (pronounced “chee”) is often translated as “energy” into English. But as a healer whose primary tool ultimately is qi, I find this translation to be grossly lacking. Qi is a vital substance in Chinese medicine, along with jing, or pre-heaven essence (what you are born with, we often liken jing to the pilot light of a furnace – it is the substance that gets everything else going in the body); and jin ye, the thick and thin fluids of the body (think sweat, tears, the fluid in the joints, cereberospinal fluid, etc.). Qi is created in your body from the food that you eat and the air that you breathe. It flows through the primary channels or meridians of the body that we associate with individual organs of the body and supports the functions of those organs. We also refer to the qi of each organ as the functional action of each organ, which is where we get the idea of qi as an energy. The Chinese character for qi is a picture of steam rising up from cooked rice. Qi is both the steam and the action of rising, substance and action together.

At a very simple level, the better the food you eat and the purer the air that you breathe, the stronger and healthier your qi and blood will be. But we all know that life is more complicated than that. We overthink about something and our qi gets knotted; we fall down and the flow qi and blood in the area where we landed gets disrupted; we eat food that is less than ideal so we don’t digest it properly then “turbid qi” (also known as phlegm and dampness) is created instead of “pure qi”; a co-worker shows up at work coughing, sneezing and probably running a mild fever; we work all day on our feet lifting heavy objects and our reserves become depleted; we sit at a computer all day for work and our flow of qi and blood become stagnated... you get the idea. Now symptoms begin to arise: acid reflux, headache, diarrhea, constipation, anger, anxiety, low back pain, painful periods, cough, weight gain – all of these symptoms, and yours too, begin with a disruption of qi and/or blood. But the organs and qi in the channels are all connected to each other, so a disruption of qi and blood in one place never stays there, it spreads to other organs and channels disrupting their free flow too, causing symptoms to arise in other places in the body.

It is my job as an acupuncturist to identify the sick channel and organ so I can bring it back into balance and your body can then begin to heal itself. If we catch the problem of qi and blood at the beginning, the flow of qi and blood is easier to correct and requires fewer treatments. The longer a problem has been going on, the more time and effort it will take to correct the flow and vitality of qi and blood. A rule of thumb I usually go by is for every month that a symptom has been going on, it will take about a week of treatment to rectify it. An issue that has been going on for a year usually takes about 3 months to resolve. It is also important to remember that not everything is fixable with acupuncture. I can’t close a hernia with acupuncture needles. I can help manage the symptoms while you are waiting for surgery, and I can assist the post-surgical recovery, but the actual fixing of the hernia is best addressed with Western medicine. If you have an obvious infection, don’t see me. Go get antibiotics, then come see me because acupuncture can increase the effectiveness and mitigate side-effects of pharmaceuticals. Western medicine is very good at preserving life. All life threatening medical emergencies and conditions are best addressed with Western medicine. Acupuncture is very good a improving the quality of life. Ideal health outcomes are best achieved when Western medicine and acupuncture are used together to maintain good health.