Photo Credit Antonika Chanel
Acupuncture is a part of Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) and involves the placement of hair-thin needles into specific meridian points across the body to stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanisms and promote physical and mental well-being. While the method has been practiced for more than 2,500 years, it is often misunderstood because of differences in approach to diagnosis and treatment between TEAM and conventional medicine.
For instance, a medical doctor might assess a breathing problem by doing a focused patient history and exam on the lungs, doing X-rays on the chest, and perhaps sending the patient for breathing studies or lab work. In their head, the doctor starts with a long list of all the possibilities that might be causing the breathing difficulty and winnows out the ones that don’t fit the picture through physical exam, labs, and radiographic studies. In this way, the doctor hones in on the chances that the cause of the breathing difficulty is from one or two issues. This is a reductionist way of approaching medical problems. It can be effective, but it leads to the siloed thinking that frustrates many people in today’s conventional medicine. Patients often wonder if their doctors are talking to each other and thinking of them as a whole person.
In TEAM, the approach is not focused on one isolated system--it is holistic. Each organ is conceptualized as having a specific relationship to every other organ in the system. An acupuncturist thinks about the entire person and how all the other organs in the body are interacting with the lungs to create the problems with breathing.