How does acupuncture help relieve pain?
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at
7:25 am
i have a phobia of needles (extreme fear) and i wanted to know how acupuncture is supposed to help if they are sticking needles in you! would a person like me even be helped by it or be too stressed for it? and please don’t say “chi” unless you can provide scientific back up.
Tagged with: Acupuncture • Help • Pain • relieve
Filed under: Acupuncture Stress
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
My uni offers a course on Traditional Chinese Medicine and part of this includes Acupuncture.
A while back I hurt my ACL and went to the uni clinic so the final year TCM students could practice their acupuncture on my sore knee.
The first thing that I realised was the needles are sooooo thin (thinner than sewing pins!), and it is so quick and practically painless how they insert them. Basically they take a needle that is the correct size for it’s placement (eg short/medium/long) and put a drinking straw on the place where the needle is to go. The needle slips into the straw then they give it a quick sharp tap and take the straw away. Voila-the needle is in, in less than half a second!
They recommended several courses to help the knee but I wasn’t available for them and as a result I can’t say if it helped my knee or not. The experience was something in itself, and even if it was a placebo affect then that’s fine by me!
Try going with a friend (for support) and not looking when they put the needles in. They don’t really stick in very far at all, and because they are very thin and light you can’t feel the weight of them once they are in.
As with most phobias gradual and repeated exposure is one proven way to overcome your fears.
I think it’s important to overcome a fear of needles because some people I know who are phobic of them refuse to get blood tests or shots from their doctor-and this is putting their health at serious risk!!!