Don’t believe in Acupuncture Side-Effects?

An acupuncture side-effect comes in one of three forms:

1/ Experience and Research …

… show that there are, in a small percentage of patients, minor adverse effects.

Any form of medicine or therapy has potential side-effects but acupuncture’s record over thousands of years has been very good.

 

 

 

 

See below for the results of research on this.

2/ Traditional or ‘classical’ acupuncture …

… is a form of therapy that aims to treat the whole person. Unlike orthodox (Western) medicine, which sometimes treats particular symptoms without too much regard for the health of the whole, (see Suppression), acupuncture treatments cannot always be absolutely precise in their side-effects.

As a result, the effects of treatment can flow in many directions. This means that an acupuncture side-effect can be beneficial!

Suppose you have aching joints, diagnosed as ‘invasion by cold and damp‘ (Chinese Medicine terminology). Suppose acupuncture treatment cleared this cold and damp. Then you’d feel better in many ways, not least by having a more positive, dare we say ‘sunny’, outlook.

Why? Because if your body has been ‘invaded’ by Cold you will tend to feel slow and low in energy. You will want to avoid cold environments and you’ll prefer warm food – even in summer! In effect, you are diminished.

And Damp makes your body heavy, often with swellings in joints, or oedematous. Stiff and sore, you will often be unable to get comfortable in bed.

 

 

In the morning, you will take a while to get going: weary.

And you might start to feel the treatment’s beneficial side effects even before your aching joints started to improve. 

This is because acupuncture’s ‘side-effect’ is to benefit your body’s overall constitution as well as clear the cold and damp.  

… Deficiency …

Because of its ‘deficiency‘ your constitution was originally unable to stop the invasion of damp and cold. So it makes sense to boost your constitution as an intrinsic part of the treatment. The aim is, not least, to reduce the likelihood of the aching joints recurring.

You might also sleep better, meaning that you’d have more energy the next day. We’d also expect your circulation and appetite to improve – even your libido, perhaps! These are all side-effects, some or all of which might improve before your joints.

By the way! Click here to read about Acupuncture Effectiveness and what the World Health Organisation says about it.

3/ Sometimes your acupuncture side-effect goes in unexpected directions.

Consequently you may not notice them or even realise they are related to your treatment; so you fail to appreciate their importance.

There is an old law, based on how people got more ill – or better –  in the West. This is not a Chinese concept. It’s called the Law of Cure.

This was first elaborated by Dr Constantine Hering, a German Doctor who converted to homoeopathy.  He eventually moved to the United States of America in the 19th century. Whether you believe in homoeopathy and the vitalist philosophy of health from which it sprang is neither here nor there! Hering’s “Law of Cure” when observed can produce remarkable results.

In its original form the law stated that a really health-enhancing treatment would tend to make symptoms move:-

• from the centre outwards
• in direction from a more important organ to a less important one
• from above downwards
• in the reverse order of their original occurrence.

Because acupuncture points used for treatment often cover many parts of your body, arms and legs, and may be addressing problems in those areas, the third part of the ‘Law of Cure’ is less obvious in practice.

But the ‘from the centre outwards’ and other parts of the ‘Law’ are often seen.

When your complaint improves but you feel worse – what then?

Suppose you find that a given treatment manages successfully to suppress a problem.

That’s good, isn’t it? Well, not if this is at the price of, say, your sleep, or mental well-being, or energy (just some examples).  Or let’s say it stops your hair falling but you find yourself getting more anxious.  These are examples of the ‘Law of Cure’ working in the wrong direction.

May we point out, however, that many forms of orthodox (Western) medicine suppress symptoms as a matter of course! This leads in the long run to just the same internalisation of the problem. Indeed, Western medicine has a very long and undistinguished history of doctor-caused or drug-caused problems. See iatrogenic disease. (A small quote from the article says “Around 20 percent of all prescriptions contain an error – from the wrong dose to the wrong drug – and these mistakes could be killing up to 22,000 Britons every year. A similar rate of error, and death, is happening in every country around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.”

Just one example: someone with a cough is given medication that stops the cough. Wonderful! Just what the patient wanted. Later, however, and unconnected by either patient or doctor to the cough medicines, the patient develops chronic asthma, for which ongoing medication is necessary.

Both doctor and patient might here claim that the asthma was under control and that therefore the patient was now perfectly healthy.

We would argue quite the opposite – that the disease had internalised, eventually weakening the patient’s energy and resistance to disease. Also, of course, requiring ongoing medication.

For more about medicine-caused illness, click here.