Acupuncture Saratoga Springs is a holistic form of traditional Chinese medicine in which a patient is inserted with hair thin needles in specific points on the body for the remediation of pain and for treatment of other health disorders. The origin of acupuncture goes back for over a thousand years before Christ. Acupuncture was first annotated 2200 years ago in China. It is the premier form of treatment for most Chinese and became a popular form of pain treatment in the United States in the 1970’s.
The two schools of acupuncture today are classical or traditional acupuncture and Western medical acupuncture. Classical acupuncture is animated by the philosophies of Taoism and naturalism. This is the acupuncture practiced for thousands of years by the Chinese. Its foundation rests in the idea that the body is animated, lives and grows by the energies of yin and yang, and these two forces comprise the forces making up a person’s Qi or chi. Yin and yang are basically similar to the positive and negative forces of electricity. When yin and yang does not balance each other out, the body suffers form sickness and disease. By applying acupuncture needles into certain acupuncture points on the body, according to classical Chinese acupuncture, balance of yin and yang is restored and unhindered chi flow is restored. Classical Chinese acupuncture also believes that chi flows through energy pathways called meridians. Western medical acupuncture, on the other hand, discards these beliefs and instead relies in the scientific method and the disciplines of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry to understand the mechanics of acupuncture. This school of thought states that the insertion of needles in the precise site of treatment stimulates the nervous system to release endorphins, enkephalins and other beneficial chemicals that alleviates or removes pain and strengthens the immune system. Besides this fundamental difference, superficial differences such as the manner to how the needles are placed, the number of needles needed for treatment, which is less for Western acupuncture, and the amount of time the needles need to be in the patient’s body (also less needle application time for Western acupuncture), lie between traditional and Western acupuncture.
The slow transition of acupuncture into mainstream medicine lies in the skepticism of Western medical science in acupuncture’s clinical beneficial claim and the influence of pharmaceutical medicine, which face to lose revenue as acupuncture slips into mainstream medicine. By the fact that acupuncture does not have side effects for treatment of pain, it is a superior alternative for pain medications. However, the benefits of acupuncture in treating chronic pain conditions, smoking cessation and even treating infertility cannot be denied. The United States National Institute of Health validated acupuncture’s effectiveness by stating its efficacy in healing certain types of chronic pain as well as certain health problems.