Acupuncture - What's It All About? by Christian Goodman

Acupuncture has always been part of ancient Chinese medicine. The principles of acupuncture are very similar to acupressure.

Fine thin needles are inserted in the skin to stimulate specific points called meridians which are believed to be energy paths to treat illness and provide general good health.

When a person experiences sickness or injury the chi (pronounced either 'chee' or 'kie', like pie) gets blocked and positive energy stops flowing.

On the body's exterior surface, there are 365 different points of acupuncture spread all over, and all these points follow 14 main meridian paths.

When specially designed needles or acupressure are placed at certain locations on the meridians the blocks are released thus enabling the chi to circulate freely.

The concept is similar to clearing blocks that are stopping a river from flowing freely. Acupuncture normalizes the flow of 'chi' so that it flows freely and steadily, not too fast and not too slow.

This form of medicine has been practiced in China for at least 4,000 years, with these needles found in archaeology digs of the late Shang Dynasty (c.1000 BC).

The three kinds of acupuncture are traditional Yin/Yang Theory, Five Elements, and the Western or medical acupuncture.

The technique used in these types of acupuncture, both to diagnose and to treat, are the same, but the manner towards knowing the source of the illness and the treatment vary between the types.

The five-element structure acupuncture is based on the five-element cycle seen in Chinese medicine. The basic idea is that a disease or sickness is caused by physical or emotional stress.

Based on this, it's thought that only if inner stress is taken care of can physical illness or symptoms be cured.

This method is a slow process, because it treats both the symptoms and the reason behind the disease. Due to this process, it takes longer to attain full recovery.

According to the Yin/Yang theory the overall balance of the Yin and Yang has to be maintained for good health. In this type of acupuncture different points are pierced with the needles all along the meridians in order to help cure and affect different
illnesses in your body.

Western acupuncture focuses on short-term, immediate cure of illnesses, and combines both Western and Eastern medical techniques. There are two sub-categories of this method.

The first is the anesthetic acupuncture, and is used is surgical and dental procedures. Again it is used as an analgesic for temporary but immediate effect.

The second category is acupuncture used to treat long-term illnesses.

Some very respectable and popular medical research says that this method is very effective for curing allergies, depression, arthritis, asthma, gynecological disorders, infertility, high blood pressure and migraines.

Some chronic illnesses which have not had satisfactory results from conventional treatments have been cured using acupuncture. It has also been effective in treating illnesses caused by problems associated with lifestyle.

Copyright 2009 Christian Goodman is a famous natural health researcher and the creator of the Alternative health Blog. His newest success is the Fibromyalgia treatment, one of the Health alternatives for curing fiblromyalgia naturally.