Tag: needles

Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese therapy that involves putting tiny needles in the skin at certain points in the body to restore the flow of energy through the body. Nancy Naeve Brown met a Sioux Falls woman who is sold on it’s healing nature because she no longer has hot flashes, insomnia or allergy congestion.

Linda Olson has been coming to get acupuncture from Dr. Dawn Flickema at the Sioux Falls Avera McGreevy Clinic on 69th going on 3 months now and going on 3 months she says she has never felt better.

Linda says, “I’d been having issues with hot flashes and insomnia for well over a year and anytime I don’t have to take a pill I’m for it.”

Dr. Flickema says, “It’s not a hollow needle like you draw blood with. It’s a solid stainless steel sterile needle when I put the needle in I’m looking for specific anatomic landmarks as to where the meridian is for the person I’m trying to fix. What I do is twist the needle down to hit the specific cells associated with the meridian.”

Acupuncture has it’s origins in ancient China. For thousands of years practitioners of Eastern medicine have developed acupuncture skills and techniques that have been refined and re-refined into a very effective and precise medical art. However, it is still in many ways an art and can differ greatly from one practitioner to another. Within recent decades acupuncture has gain broad acceptance within Western medicine and has been scientifically show to have great benefit in many different medical and health circumstances. One of many specific uses for acupuncture that has been closely examined is it’s effect on athletic performance. Athlete’s have been shown to be more willing to engage in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), 56%, as compared to the general population, 36%. So is there an actual benefit to acupuncture on athletics? After a brief literature review, the answer is a resounding yes. Keep in mind, that there are many additional benefits of acupuncture, which are beyond the scope of this article.

18 year old Lu Lu the cat gets acupuncture regularly. A year ago she was down to a mere five pounds.

“She had about 45% kidney functioning,” said Lu Lu’s owner John Hassell.

He said Lu Lu’s future didn’t look good.

“We had taken her to another vet and they didn’t see any hope,” Hassell said.

That’s when Hassell heard about Veterinarian Paul Wittke at Battle Ground Veterinary Clinic on North Ninth Street who, along with traditional Western medicine, also uses integrative, or Chinese medicine, to treat pets.

“When your cat is at a point that conventional medicine isn’t doing anything, then you try anything,” Hassell explained.

A dog owner yesterday told of her delight after her pet regained her health – through the ancient Chinese practise of acupuncture.

Scottie dog Heather was left in severe pain after developing a problem with a disc in her spine.

Conventional medicine did little to help the nine-year-old animal, who still had trouble walking three months after her injury despite rest and medication.

But owner Helen Anthony, from Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, found an unexpected solution when her pet was referred to a vet who practises acupuncture, which involves inserting needles into the body for therapeutic purposes.

Chronic pain is often associated with getting older, but new figures indicate that about 10 per cent of those aged 12 to 44 also experience extreme aches and discomfort. Figures from Statistics Canada released Wednesday show that nine per cent of males in this age group and 12 per cent of females reported chronic pain in 2007-2008. The prevalence is relatively low among the 12-to-17 age group, but rises to 14 per cent of males and 17 per cent of females in those aged 35 to 44.

A dog owner has told of her delight after her pet regained her health – through the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture.

Scottie dog Heather was left in severe pain after developing a problem with a disc in her spine.

Conventional medicine did little to help the nine-year-old animal, who still had trouble walking three months after her injury despite rest and medication. But owner Helen Anthony, from Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, found an unexpected solution when her pet was referred to a vet who practises acupuncture, which involves inserting needles into the body for therapeutic purposes.

THIS STUDY randomly assigned 88 children, 7 to 12 years old, who were wearing corrective lenses because of amblyopia caused by differing degrees of near- or farsightedness, known as anisometropia, to one of two treatment groups. Children in one group wore a felt patch on the “good” eye for two hours a day and spent at least one of those hours reading, working on a computer or similarly exercising the other eye. The other children were given acupuncture treatments five days a week and did eye activities for an hour daily. Acupuncture was given at five points: on the top of the head, near the nose end of the eyebrow, in the temple, on the hand and on the ankle. After about three months, lazy eye was considered resolved in 42 percent of those given acupuncture, compared with 17 percent of those who wore a patch. In addition, both groups showed improvement in vision: 76 percent of the acupuncture group and 67 percent of those who’d worn a patch could read two more lines on an eye-test chart.

Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese needle piercing therapy, is suggested by a new study as another optional treatment apart from patching for amblyopia, commonly called “lazy eye.”

Amblyopia is a disorder of the visual system that is characterized by poor or indistinct vision in an eye that is otherwise physically normal. Eye surgery, glasses or contact lenses are normally needed to correct this form of eye visual disorder.

Acupuncture is a procedure adapted from ancient Chinese therapy in which certain body areas are activated by the insertion of sharp, thin needles in order to relieve pain or produce regional anesthesia [loss of feeling or sensation as a result of drugs or gases. General anesthesia causes loss of consciousness; local or regional anesthesia causes loss of feeling only to a specified area.] .

Acupuncture is a process which is treated with the help of needles. The needles are inserted in to various parts of the body to relieve pain of for other therapeutic purposes. The origins of acupuncture are still not confirmed that in which century it has started, but we know that it has been originated from China.
In the modern times acupuncture treatments received a lot of criticism from the modern Chinese civil war and Chinese communist party leaders labeling acupuncture with different names such as superstitious and backward and creating a hurdle in scientific progress.

Acupuncture gained popularity when American president Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and was shown a patient under going a surgery through acupuncture and the patient was fully awake and during the same time he was accompanied by a reporter of New York Times and he received a treatment through acupuncture and was stunned after receiving the treatment. He was so impressed with the treatment that he wrote an article relating to acupuncture which then gained its popularity.

While plenty of people who receive acupuncture for the relief of chronic pain swear by its effectiveness, the western medical community has long remained skeptical of this increasingly popular alternative treatment. More and more research studies, however, are confirming the idea that acupuncture has its place in western medicine. The latest, a study out of the University Hospital in Essen, Germany, suggests that acupuncture transforms the way the brain processes pain.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers led by Dr. Nina Theysohn from the University Hospital’s department of diagnostic and interventional radiology and neuroradiology were able to observe the areas of the brain that typically deal with pain perception and response. By studying 18 healthy volunteers who received an electronic pain stimulus to their left ankles, radiologists discovered that when acupuncture needles were placed on the right side of the subjects’ bodies, the activation of the brain’s pain processing areas was substantially reduced.