What is medical acupuncture?

Acupuncture is a very ancient Chinese medical art. This is a technique for inserting and manipulating fine needles to specific points in the body for pain relief and therapeutic purposes. There are many ways to learn and practice it. Medical acupuncture is a term used to describe acupuncture by doctors trained and licensed by Western medicine. The doctor also uses acupuncture training as a professional practice. Such a physician or health professional may use one or the other method, or a combination of both, to treat a dysfunction or disease.

How does medical acupuncture evolve?

Chinese medicine research has taken a lot of time. This is why Western doctors who want to use acupuncture techniques and other medical methods create medical acupuncture. Medical acupuncture is created for doctors, physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths. People who know acupuncture are called acupuncturists. The term alternative medicine is often used in the modern Western world, including any treatment practice that does not fall into the traditional medical field. Acupuncture is considered one of the alternative medical techniques. Medical acupuncture is evidence-based medicine that attempts to understand the effects of acupuncture from Western scientific perspectives rather than in the traditional Chinese medical paradigm.

What is the difference between medical acupuncture and classic acupuncture?

Medical acupuncture is a contemporary form of acupuncture developed by Western medical doctors. In medical acupuncture, traditional acupoint and meridian theories are either completely ignored or completely reinterpreted because there is no verifiable anatomical or histological basis for the presence of acupoints or meridians. In the case of medical acupuncture, the concept of disease stems from modern Western pathology rather than Chinese medical theory before the use of scientific methods. Finally, medical acupuncture is understood to work through Western biomedical understanding.

World Health Organization [WHO] recommendations

The following are the conditions recommended by the World Health Organization for acupuncture

Respiratory diseases such as acute sinusitis, acute rhinitis, common cold, acute tonsillitis.

Bronchopulmonary diseases such as acute bronchitis and bronchial asthma.

Eye diseases such as acute conjunctivitis, cataract [no complications], myopia, central retinitis.

Oral abnormalities such as toothache, pain after tooth extraction, gingivitis, pharyngitis, etc.

Orthopedic diseases such as frozen shoulder, tennis elbow, sciatica, low back pain, rheumatoid arthritis.

Gastrointestinal diseases, such as esophageal spasm and cardia, hiccups, hyperacidity, acute and chronic gastritis, hyperacidity, chronic duodenal ulcer, acute and colonic colitis, acute bacterial dysentery, diarrhea, paralytic ileus .

Nervous system diseases such as headache, migraine, trigeminal neuralgia, facial paralysis, post-stroke paralysis, peripheral neuropathy, paralysis caused by polio, Meniere syndrome, neurogenic bladder dysfunction, nocturnal enuresis, intercostal nerve pain.

Modern interpretation

There are two attempts at Western medicine interpretation of the acupuncture mechanism.

Patrick Wall and Robert Melzack's pain gate theory assumes that there are gates or filters in the spinal cord that regulate the transmission of pain information within the nervous system.

The second explanation is based on the natural opiatus present in the central nervous system and other parts of the body. It is a pain-relieving substance such as endorphin and enkephalin.

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