Some see acupuncture as an exotic or mystical healing art that has not been tried by the majority of people living in the United States. Most of these people only know about acupuncture by information fed to them by the corporate media through television most of the time.
A lot of people find it hard to imagine to be pricked with several needles at various parts of the body. But when conventional Western modes of treatment have failed them then they wouldn’t have any alternative forms of treatment to turn to. When they become so sick and wracked with pain, then they may be willing to try things they haven’t tried before.
If you want to try out acupuncture for yourself or for others, you need to get to know the two most popular types of acupuncture today: medical and Chinese acupuncture. This way you know what kind if treatment procedure you want for you specific health needs.
Medical acupuncture is viewed by acupuncture experts as a milder and gentler version of Chinese acupuncture. The needles used by medical acupuncturists are considerably thinner and smaller compared to the ones used by Chinese acupuncture. Oftentimes medical acupuncture is administered by a health professional or doctor. There are states that do require training for doctors to practice medical acupuncture and doctors can perform this procedure in their office. Even if the doctor has undergone training for medical acupuncture, the training would not be as intensive compared to the training undergone by a licensed acupuncturist who trained for several years in Chinese acupuncture. The code for medical acupuncturists in the US is wma and medical acupuncture integrates the western life science disciplines to explain how acupuncture treats disorders in people. Medical acupuncturists diagnose illnesses based upon the Western style of diagnosis and will even give out medications as one way to treat a condition.
Chinese acupuncture is practiced by a licensed acupuncturist. This acupuncture is holistic in nature since it sees aches and pains of a body part as assign that the whole body is not functioning well. Chinese acupuncturists see illness as things that may be due to the environment, the mind or the patient’s lifestyle. It strives to understand that factors causing a condition and this skill can take literally a lot of years to achieve. Chinese acupuncturists are trained to know what acupuncture points or acupoints are to be treated with needles for a specific ailment. They believe that these acupoints are connected to meridians or paths where the life force called chi flows in the body. They also believe that the energy becomes imbalanced when chi flow stagnates leading to illness. Chinese acupuncture do not use Western pharmaceutical medications enabling the body to heal without side effects.