Acupuncture - Can it help you?

What is Acupuncture?

Acupuncture is one of the main treatment methods in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is commonly used for a variety of diseases among the five main types of TCM treatments in the history of China, due to its effectiveness, the simplicity of use and purely natural.

Acupuncture is based on the ancient Chinese theory about the connection between our human body and spirit with the environment we live. TCM believes that diseases are influenced by three main categories: emotionally (stress, fear & anger etc), lifestyles (daily activities, eating patterns & occupations etc) and externally (wind, hot, cold, damp & gravity etc).

These factors will constantly add pressures to the body and distracting it from function normally, thus eventually causes an imbalance of the Body, according to TCM. Acupuncturist then tries to rebalance the body by inserting fine needles into certain locations on the body, in order activates the energetic pathway and stimulates the self-recovery function, which will guide the body back to normal.

The big question is.... Does Acupuncture hurt?

In most cases acupuncture is not painful, however, there are some factors that can influence the level of pain felt by the patients.

Different styles of acupuncture: there are many different types of acupuncture techniques among the acupuncturists. Each had own beliefs and hand skills, such as some acupuncture believe the strong needle stimulating and deeper insertion achieves favourable the results, while some believed just inserted shallowly and gentle stimulation also helps. The harder and stronger stimulation will be most likely to cause more pain than gentle styles.

Dr Wen uses Japanese/Korean quality needles and gentle insertion and stimulation approach for the Acupuncture session, to minimize the needle pain that can happened during treatment. In addition, always tells the Practitioner that you are more concern about the needling pain, we will choose more finer needle that further reduce the sensation caused by needle. We believe that only for you to fully relaxed during the treatment, the optimum results will then be achieved.

Locations of insertion: thick muscle layer area, such as elbow, leg & hip etc, will feel much lesser needle sensation compare to the thin muscle layer area, such as hand & foot. Thus, to avoid stronger stimulation in those area is essential.

Rare occasions: In some rare situations, about 5% of times, the needle may twitch the skin once it penetrated skin and caused pain when continuing insert the needle. This is often the case scared the patients; therefore, it is essential for you need to tell the Acupuncturists that the needle is too painful to keep insert. We will then take out the needle and reinsert again to stop the pain from continuing.

Emotional Stress: People often being too scared about the needle, they become stressed and tightened their muscles during needling. This causes the practitioner harder to insert the needle and enlarge the sensations of the needle pain. It is recommended to have some deep breath and relax as much as possible before needle insertion. Focus more on the breathing or affected locations instead of needling area would also help reducing the pain sensation.

If you are interested in exploring these options, please book in a consultation with Dr Wen on 03 5995 1288.