How Acupuncture Benefits Your Body by Enhancing Blood Flow

back points on an acupuncture

Acupuncture increases blood flow to enhance energy, reduce fatigue, and calm anxiety to enhance your body's functioning!Most people think of acupuncture for blocking nerve irritation and pain relief. That is true, but the idea of maintaining blood flow was of paramount importance in its development and remains important for its effects on your body today.The emperor enlisted the help of the best physicians at the time to work for him to keep him healthy. (If they didn’t they were killed or banished!)The emperor was judged by how healthy he looked how many children he could sire for a suitable heir.  If not, inner court intrigues would rise against the emperor. So initially, Chinese medicine developed in the emperor’s court.How did this work? The earliest written book about acupuncture called the “Inner classic” (Nei Jing), described the size and shape of the organs. The book also discussed the blood vessel network explained the difference between oxygenated blood, poorly oxygenated blood, and non-blood substances which is similar to our arterial blood flow, venous return and plasma. They might have used different terms, but classical Han dynasty language is no longer use even in modern China so interpretation of these words in a modern context here was explanation of the use of acupuncture to help fix aberrated blood flow flowing through the body.Today heart disease is still the number one killer in America. Every year, about 805,000 Americans have a heart attack. Like Chinese medicine, the importance of blood flow is paramount to both medicines, with one difference. Chinese medicine postulates that blood flow if keep circulating at higher levels than your age warrants, will help you age slower, stay healthier, and reduce disease markers. Chinese medicine treats poor blood flow in pre-clinical conditions as well as diseased conditions, regardless of degree. They do this to make sure your body is staying healing and aging gracefully. Chinese medicine is very proactive in treating both existing diseases and preventing conditions from arising in the first place.Blood flow contains the hormones, nutrients, oxygen that is needed. With age, continuous stress, poor habits, bad diet, long work hours, and polluted environment.Pain, feeling stressed, anxiety, depression, poor sleep all can be traced back to poor blood flow affecting a certain organ.  You weren’t born stressed, tired, anxious, or depressed. It can be related to poor blood flow circulating to different places in your body.So, Chinese medicine dovetails with our modern understanding of blood flow. The energy model still exists, but from the original classics, acupuncture and Chinese medicine was first and foremost about circulation and improving blood flow. Chinese medicine takes the blood flow theory and applies it to many different conditions including pain, emotional stress, hormone issues, digestive issues.Conventional medicine looks at heart disease as the main problem but doesn’t treat until there is a real diseaseDetection only shows a positive test when the cardiac artery is really blocked. Treadmill tests only show blocked arteries when the cardiac artery is 70% percent blocked! Pre-clinical signs of heart disease, don’t warrant treatment. But what about the other 69 percent?. It is a “watch and wait” scenario. You have to wait until you feel really sick and have chest pains to warrant further testing. I listen to many a patient describe how they can still exercise but feel pressure in their chest, but they do not come up with anything showing abnormality in the cardiovascular department. Yet they still feel symptoms.  Sadly, not much can be done. Yet the quality of life begins to suffer. Do you feel you can't really exercise very hard? Do you feel more exhausted after exercise? Or at the end of a day? Do you have trouble staying asleep?What about all the years and days that the condition gets worse. People chalk it off to feeling stressed or “getting old’.  Replace these words with “poor function”. Chinese medicine makes a big deals about  functional health  and  addresses your complaints so the problems don’t get bigger. There is no watch-and-wait. There is increasing and improving blood flow to address these symptoms.If you are having a weak pump, but it is not clinically significant yet be be detected, can you still treat it? The answer is yes.Chinese medicine takes it further and looks at other conditions that can arise due to poor blood flow. Poor blood flow and sluggish blood that gets stuck circulating in the organs such as the liver, lungs stomach, intestines, and kidneys, all cause problems - physical and emotional.Heart disease is the main one and it is largely ignored until it becomes a problem. Usually, the first sign of a heart attack is the attack itself, with no warning signs at all.Chinese medicine treats symptoms such as pain, anxiety, depression, high stress, insomnia, bi-polar disorder, poor digestion, for example,  by targeting the organ with poor blood flow and restoring the blood flow to it. The blood flow returns the oxygen and the hormones flow to the brain and organs better.Since acupuncture and blood flow are linked, one simple take away to sum this up is:

“Improved blood flow means improved health”

Chinese medicine takes this concept and uses it to help people get out of pain-increased blood flow brings your body’s own anti-inflammatory substances into the area.  Enhancing endorphins to the brain while regulating respiration and blood pressure helps you to feel more relaxed. relaxing smooth muscle tissue that lines the stomach and intestine, help regulate digestive problems. If you are having difficulty getting pregnant, increasing blood flow to the hypothalamus and the uterus is critical to regulate hormones.Before treating we need to evaluate your condition using hands on old school methods such as traditional pulse evaluation, tongue, analysis, looking at the color of your hands, ears, and face to glean cues from your body as to what is going on. We need a strategy before any treatment is undertaken so we can get you the best results! Looking at your blood flow we can see what we need to do to effectively help your problem!Are you looking to get help with your problem?  We are here to help you? If you'd like to see if this is a method that can help you, I invite you to call me at 201-444-7150, where we can set up a consultation either by Zoom call, phone or in person. We are never too busy to help you in our acupuncture office, called Integrative Acupuncture Center, located in Ridgewood NJ, 07450.