Acunpuncture: an Overview Essay

What is Acupuncture? How does sticking a bunch of needles into your body make you feel better? Is this stuff for real? These be all questions Ive asked myself, and have heard from others over the years. Acupuncture is a system of complementary medicine that involves pricking the skin with needles. Its used to assuage pain and to treat various physical, mental, and emotional conditions is one of the key components of conventional Chinese Medicine and is among the oldest healing practices in the world.In a 2007 Consensus Development Conference, The topic Institute of Health determined that According to the traditional Chinese medicine approach, stimulating specific stylostixis points corrects imbalances in the fly the coop of qi through channel known as meridians. Acupuncture can be dated back thousands of years, and as with any topic that old, on that point is a plethora of information available, and it sometimes can be hard to decipher.After researching the topic, and because of the context of the assignment, I narrowed my focus good deal to three specific areas theory, which covers qi, meridians, and acupuncture points history, which can be furrowed protrude into antiquity, middle history, and the modern era and lastly the length, diameter, and material of needles. The basis of acupuncture deals with manipulating the flows of qi through come to the fore the body.According to Daoist principles, qi is the active principle forming disperse of any living thing, and it is the central underlying principle in twain Traditional Chinese Medicine and martial arts. The literal translation of qi is breath, air, or gas however, it is frequently translated as life energy, life force, or energy flow. In A Clinical Introduction to Medical Acupuncture, the authors, Aung & Chen, state, Traditional Chinese medicine distinguishes not only one but several different kinds of qi.In a general sense, qi is something that is defined by phoebe bird cardinal functions. Th ese cardinal functions are what keep the body a follow. The first function qi provides is keeping the body, especially the limbs, warm during cold temperatures. The energy from it foments the blood, the extremities, and allows us to live and our biological processes to take place. Qi also enables the actuation of the biological processes such as breathing, sweating, it controls the nervous system, and most importantly the circulation of all the body fluids such as blood in its vessels.Qi also provides containment of those fluids in their proper spot it keeps blood, sweat, urine, and semen from leaking or excessive emission. We know now that food broken down by the digestion process, and that various enzymes convert it into blood, nutrients, and that theres a process for making the air we breathe into oxygen for our lungs. The ancient Chinese believed that qi did the change of food, drink, and breath into qi, blood, fluids, and the transformation of all of the latter into each othe r.The last function provided by qi, is defense against the Six Essences. The Six Essences are allegorical terms sometimes used to describe disharmony patterns in the body and their names are derived from environmental elements that were thought to pattern, or mimic, the symptoms. The first of the Six Essences is Wind, which is characterized by rapid flak of symptoms, wandering positioning of symptoms, itching, nasal congestion, floating pulse tremor, paralysis, or convulsion.The second of the Essences is Cold, which manifests itself in cold sensations, aversion to cold, relief of symptoms by warmth, watery/clear excreta, trying pain, abdominal pain, contracture and hypertonicity of muscles, (slimy) white tongue fur, and hidden, string-like, or slow pulse. Fire (or heat) is the third of the Essences. Its symptoms are recognizable by aversion to heat, high fever, thirst, c erstntrated urine, exit face or tongue, yellow tongue fur, and a rapid pulse.The last three Essences are Damp ness, Dryness, and Summerheat the symptoms of which are, respectively, sensation of heaviness, fullness, and symptoms of Spleen dysfunction dry cough, m out(p)h, throat, lips, skin, stool, and nosebleeds and either heat or mixed damp-heat symptoms. In order fulfill its functions, qi has to steadily flow from the inside of the body to the superficial body tissues of the skin, muscles, tendons, bones, and joints. It is assisted in its flow by channels referred to as meridians.Traditional Chinese Medicines identifies twelve regular and eight extraordinary meridians. (Aung & Cheng, 19-20) At various points along the meridians, are acupuncture points. The event of points has varied considerably over time. Initially they were considered to number 365 acupuncture points, symbolically aligning with the number of days in the year however, the modern total, while once considered 670, has been subsequently expanded due to more recent interest in auricular (ear) cupuncture and the treatment of further conditions. These acupuncture points are mainly, but not always, lay down at specified locations along these meridians and acupuncturists use the points to manipulate the qi and restore harmony and balance to the body. Though most of these points are put together along the meridians, there is a second group of points, called extraordinary points, which are found outside the meridians and are credited with special therapeutic properties.Examples of these are the pressure points in the net between the thumb and forefinger, just inside the arch of the foot, the temples, and the anterior base of the neck. Lastly, a third category of acupuncture points called A-shi points have no fixed location but represent tender or reflexive points appearing in the course of pain syndromes. The history of acupuncture can be broken down into three distinct eras that of antiquity, which goes back to its origins its middle history dating, from the early 11th century through the 1800s and the modern era, which picks up in the early twentieth century.The precise start date of acupunctures use in China and how it evolved from early times are uncertain however, there are a myriad of theories and explanations as to how it came about. One explanation is that soldiers wounded in battle by arrows were believed to have been cured of chronic afflictions that were otherwise untreated. Another is the sharpened bian shi stones found in China, which evidence suggests the practice may date back to the Neolithic or Stone Age (Acupuncture in Medicine 10 929). at that place have also been hieroglyphs found dating from the Shang Dynasty, which ran from 1600 through 1100 BCE.It is believed that Korea was the second country acupuncture spread to outside of China, and in 1023, the emperor of China ordered the yield of a bronze statuette depicting the meridians and acupuncture points then in use. The practice of acupuncture lost a lot status subsequently song Dynasty. In the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries were among the first to bring reports of acupuncture to the West, and a Dutch surgeon traveling in Asia described the practice in both Japan and Java however, in China itself the practice was increasingly associated with the lower-classes and illiterate practitioners (Barnes, 589. The middle era of acupuncture came to an end in 1823, when an edict from the emperor banned the practice and teaching of acupuncture within the Imperial Academy of Medicine, as unfit for practice by gentlemen-scholars. The modern era of acupuncture came in to being around the time of the Chinese civil war, 1927-1949. Early Chinese Communist Party leaders ridiculed Traditional Chinese Medicine, claiming that it worked against the partys commitment to science as the way of progress.chairwoman Mao reversed that position, and rewrote its theory in order to make it fit into the Chinese political doctrine. Acupuncture gained wariness in the United States when President Richard Nixon vis ited China in 1972, and his delegation was shown a patient undergoing major surgery while awake however, it was later found out patients were chosen because they had naturally high pain tolerance, were indoctrinated into the method, and were on morphine IVs which were claimed to have been essential nutrients and fluids.The greatest exposure in the West came after a New York Times reporter received acupuncture in Beijing for post-operative pain in 1971 and wrote about it in his newspaper column. From there, the first juristic acupuncture center was opened in Washington D. C. in 1972, and in 1973, the IRS declared acupuncture was allowed to be deducted from taxes as a medical expense. The last fit of acupuncture, and arguably the most essential, is the needle. While there are certain methods that do not involve needles, most of them do.The needles have evolved over the years, originally starting out as bone, or stone now, however, most of the acupuncture needles are made of stainles s steel, with some cultures using copper. Needles vary in length ,between 13 to one hundred thirty millimeters (0. 5 in to 5 in. ), with shorter needles used near the face and eyes, and longer needles in more fleshy areas, and range in diameter from 0. 16 mm (0. 006 in) to 0. 46 mm (0. 018 in), with thicker needles used on more robust patients.After this brief overview of acupuncture, Ive answered a lot of my own questions and concerns with acupuncture The three aspects of acupuncture theory are qi, meridians, and acupuncture points. It long history has unknown origins, and edict from Chinese Emperor banned teaching in academy, but it brought back my Chairman Mao, and made popular in America by a reporter in the 70s. Needles are mostly made of stainless steel, and they vary in length, and diameter,