I have a few pains in my body, thinking about trying Acupuncture,anyone have any experience??
Apparently its great for energy, weight losses,backpains etc ec
Any experience with Acupuncture?
[Deactivated] on 14/08/2019 - 21:30
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where are you based?
Sydney
It's not a cure-all (what is?)but well worth a visit a couple of times a year. Ask around your local contacts to get some recommendations in your area.
I hurt my neck muscles / ligaments. There was a definite reduction in pain and increase of mobility after an acupuncture / massage session.
OTOH, my FIL had back issues (disk?) and it was no help. Like any treatment, it doesn't cure everything.
Tried it once for a sore back, did absolutely nothing (the muscle spasms it caused when they did it just made me feel worse), and as per Cluster's comment, there's pretty much no science to back it up. I expect it's a placebo effect for the most part. But hey, if a placebo effect gets rid of pain for a while, then that's not a bad thing eiter.
Many "mainstream" sports physiotherapists are using acupuncture when they feel it would be beneficial. I run a lot and see physios from time to time, and have had acupuncture with needles a few times when recommended by the physio , with excellent results. For me, it seems to do a good job of releasing very tense muscles, but it not a miracle cure for everything, like some people claim
Needling done by your physio and traditional acupuncture are very different. Physio do dry needling which is a thicker needle and aim is to stimulate the muscle to release the static hold. They will often wiggle the needle and you'll feel a spasm.
My understanding is acupuncture works on your energies (e.g. chi) and is based on eastern medicine. Efficacy of it is debated in medical world.
Interesting, I didn't know that
I've had acupuncture in the past (strained muscles around shoulder). It worked for me, and in my view is worth a try.
Even better is you happen to have it included in private health insurance with maybe 100% rebate for the first visit.I've had both acupuncture and dry needling several times over a number of years and different joint, muscle and soft tissue injuries. In my experience they're both pretty effective for symptomatic relief- they'll help get rid of pain and soreness but won't cure anything per se.
My advice would be to use them in conjunction with other treatments- such as physio or remedial massage- as a way to manage pain but certainly don't expect it to "fix" you, especially with regard ro weight loss.
Where it may be useful in that sense is in relieving exercise related soreness, allowing you to get in an extra session a week.
I was very sceptical before trying acupuncture for a sore back. I had to have 2 treatments a few days apart but can't complain about the results, I'd been struggling for a few weeks with the pain but almost immediately after the second treatment I was perfect again.
I had a trainee acupuncturist living across the hallway from me and my wife many years ago. And this was at a time when I was in a stressful workplace and I was suffering with migraines almost every day. The medicines that were available for migraine treatment were pretty hopeless, and prevention medicine was unheard of.
The trainee acupuncturist and her husband became friends with us and when she learned about my migraines, asked if she could practice what she had been learning. I agreed, so whenever a migraine would strike me, my wife would go and get her and I would be ‘treated’.
From those days, there were two migraine treatments which worked for me. Neither of them was conventional western medicine treatment, but they had failed me anyway.
Acupuncture treatment worked for my migraines. And a GP used a different treatment - injecting a small dose of local anaesthetic into four different spots at the base of my skull. (She told me many years later that it was a very dangerous procedure because of the precise location of the injection points. She could have either paralysed me, or maybe killed me. I’m glad that she didn’t tell me at the time!)
Acupuncture is a joke.
Dry needling is amazing. As a bodybuilder, dry needling is one of the best injury and pain management tools there is.
Acupuncture and its 'energy' is a load of mystical bull.
You forget to include "…in my opinion…"
My wife fractured her spine back in January.
She was always skeptical of acupuncture but decided to give it a go because the doctors had declared her spine healed up yet she was still stiff and in pain.
It's made a profound difference to her pain management but I think it only worked for three reasons;
1) She started early on in her recovery. If she had waited around, there wouldn't have been much he could've have done.
2) She found an acupuncturist who specialises in sport injuries. Due to the severity of her own injury, my wife needed someone good.
3) She is also doing intense physio sessions as well. Her new routine all contribute to restoring her body strength and flexibility.
I had quite bad tennis elbow that hurt every time I hit the shuttle during badminton and other racquet sports. This problem went on for weeks. After a few rounds of dry needling and massage at a physiotherapist however the problem went away. It's similar to acupuncture, but Wikipedia is quite critical of these technique and claims scientific evidence is scarce about its effectiveness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_needling
As for whether acupuncture can help with weight loss, I would be very skeptical.