RFI: acupuncture

jokes etc can go on this thread!!
Acupuncture: Classic or deflating

i would still be going regularly if i could...i think it's really helpful in some ways.

The needles don't hurt, either on entry or whilst stuck inside you. Its really relaxing, in fact: he used to leave me for 20 minutes or so & I invariably fell asleep, even face down as I was.

My pain got much better, but whether as a result of the physio, the acupuncture, changes in lifestyle/posture, I can't really say.

Certainly worth a try, though! I hope your Mum can get a referral. Good luck.

http://omni.ac.uk/text/browse/mesh/D026881.html

*(not their depth, but whether or not they are along the traditional meridians)

Does anyone have any recommendations in Brooklyn/NYC? I've gotten some positive reviews of a place on Grand St in Williamsburg, and also of a place on 6th Ave in Park Slope. Anyone here have experience with acupuncturists in the area?

any other thoughts on this? i had my first acupuncture appt yesterday, kind of waiting nervously to find out whether it was a waste of money or not.

also, i thought she'd tell me to stop drinking, but she didn't. but she did tell me i couldn't drink coffee for the next week and i am SERIOUSLY SUFFERING. how do people stay awake without it?! :(

i've been going to a community acupuncture place in ny called "city acupuncture" that charges on a sliding scale ($25-$50). i have been going weekly, it helps me a lot with back problems/migraines. it's an open studio so you are at a table in a large room with other people but it's actually a really comfortable/relaxing place. i had cupping yesterday too and i'm not sure how i feel about that. giant hickeys all over my back!

i'll take giant hickeys on my back if it works

i've been going to city acupuncture for the past month. No sense whatsoever if this is helping but the last goround was solid.

Accupunture is one of those alternative medicines that lacks a clear explanation for why it would work at all, other than the largely psuedo-scientific description involving chakras, flows of chi and whatnot. However, when it comes to healing, there is no requirement for knowing why something works, so long as it does work. Even if all it does is put one in a better frame of mind so that the body's self-healing mechanisms can operate without the hindrance of extra worry and stress, then that's A-OK in my book.

If you decide it ain't working for you, I'd say ditch it without a second thought. Otherwise, it's worth a go, bcz it's not likely to do any harm, unless its presence is displacing a better proved and more effective therapy.

Trying this on Saturday to see if it helps out with recurring, days-long episodes of headache/bodyache/fatigue. (Could be pandemic stress but they also happened while I was on a meditation retreat and very relaxed ...)

I am also considering this for my migraines; I'll be interested to hear how it goes for you. I hope it helps!

my partner ABSOLUTELY swears by this for arthritis, sleeplessness, all kinds of issues.

i tried it for about two months and saw zero benefit. go figure.

my wife is training to be an acupuncturist, so I should know a lot about this. So far though all I can say is that "there are different types of acupuncture and they are surprising different"

oh innneresting. like Traditional Chinese Medicine vs other types, or different types within TCM?

as we all get older we're going to need to quarantine this stuff in I Love Health Issues or summat

"dry needling"

TCM varies a great deal too, the dominant form of both TCM and acupuncture is a "reformed" variety which isn't coupled to any underlying spirtual/philosophical theory, the kind my wife is studying is called "five element acupuncture" in English and seems to be at least 50% the spirtual/philosophical underpinning theory stuff.

(BTW please don't ask me if I believe in any of this, I decided not to have an opinion a whole back)

she won't be practicing for a year or two but there's a whole lot of moxibustion going on already, I have got used to the smell now.

My wife's sister is a nascent practitioner of this. Just finished with two years of her making sure to say the words "grad school" anytime she talked about the alternative medicine institute where she got her degree. Also a lot of talk about "chi". My wife, who works in an urgent care clinic but would never take the time to see an actual doctor for any of her long-term maladies, has taken to getting acupuncture treatments from her sister as well as getting prescriptions of Chinese herbal medicine to help with her various problems.

The moxibustion is my least favorite though - the smell reminds me of when I was a teenager too poor to afford cigs and would rummage through other people's ashtrays to get my nicotine fix. She's been kind enough to recognize that the smell annoys me and does it outside when she can.

I have a question I don't really want to ask either of them, but maybe some of y'all know: how prevalent is TCM in ACTUAL China? Like in comparison to more contemporary medical treatments.

it's absolutely everywhere, there are TCM hospitals with women giving birth and everything, and TCM pharmacies like Tongrentang are on every community shopping street, however my wife would say virtually all of them are "not real", the powders you buy have huge amounts of unlabelled pharmaceuticals in them, like massive doses of ibuprofen.

I wonder what TCM looks like in Taiwan.

ibuprofen works, so it's at least as real as anything in TCM. when it comes to something as complex as human health, whatever is shown to work should be embraced, even when it doesn't fit your methodological model. it's all statistical anyway, so if the treatment that works 80% of the time fails, the 20% for whom it failed need to have other options to try, in descending order of effectiveness.

I tried it for wrist pain and I really liked it because my acupuncturist was this large, mellow dude with giant hands who exuded calm in waves. Can't discount how much benefit I got simply from being able to lie in a quiet room for a couple hours and settle back into my body instead of being at my stressful job though. That'll cure a ton of ills before any needles pierce the skin.