Acupuncture Longmont Colorado
What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is a therapy with origins dating back thousands of years. It involves placing small acupuncture needles at strategic places in the body to promote a healing response.
Acupuncture is one part of a greater system of Chinese medicine which has formed over the past several thousand years. The practice of acupuncture today still maintains a large portion of its roots from ancient China. However, techniques have evolved considerably since this time. Centuries of clinical experience and modern scientific research have contributed to the evolution of acupuncture. Today, acupuncture is used effectively for a broad variety of health complaints and is one of the fastest growing natural therapies in the world.
Acupuncture in Longmont Colorado
Acupuncture for chronic pain
What does acupuncture do?
Acupuncture stimulates the body to react in a variety of ways. In a broad sense, acupuncture stimulates the nervous to help balance sympathetic and parasympathetic activities. This means that it helps the body to go into a greater state of rest, which aids in healing.
Acupuncture is also found to cause the release of certain peptides such as endorphin and enkephalin. These are responsible for relieving pain. Additionally, acupuncture has been found to both decrease inflammation and improve circulation. These combined actions are likely part of why acupuncture is so effective for pain relief.
Modern research also shows that acupuncture has regulatory effects on the immune system and certain hormones.
Does acupuncture work?
With such rapidly increasing popularity, this question gets asked a lot. Thankfully, there is an enormous body of research that is now showing acupuncture's efficacy for a broad number of chronic conditions.
At this point, there are more than 13,000 studies that have been done on acupuncture throughout the world. Additionally, there have been many large-scale systemic reviews, which include hundreds of thousands of patients, that show acupuncture to be an effective treatment method.
The research shows acupuncture to be effective for a variety of chronic pain conditions such as: low back pain, neck pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, headaches, etc. There is also research showing its effectiveness for mental and emotional issues such as depression and anxiety, digestion issues such as irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, insomnia, and even some cardiovascular issues.
Is acupuncture effective immediately?
This is another good and common question. How long does acupuncture take to work?
The body begins to react immediately when the acupuncture needles are inserted. How soon these effects can be felt often depends on the condition being treated. Something that most people notice during treatments is a feeling of deep relaxation. Many people will actually fall asleep during this process.
For some pain conditions, acupuncture can often provide immediate relief. Sometimes almost as fast as the needles are inserted. For other conditions, the effects may take several hours or days in order to be observed.
For most conditions, the effects of acupuncture work cumulatively. In effect, giving deeper and longer relief of symptoms through a series of treatments. For most chronic conditions, a course of treatments is needed to achieve long term relief or even corrective effects.
