WHY ACUPUNCTURE WORKS (so well)
Laurie Mecham M.S.O.M. L.Ac.

        Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on the concept of meridians and Qi.  Inside the human body are energy channels called meridians. These channels run throughout our bodies, going deep, circling and encompassing the internal organs and coming to the surface of the skin.  Acupuncture points are where the meridians come to the surface of the skin and it is these points that the acupuncturist will stimulate during a treatment.

Some people think of the meridians and the energy they carry, Qi, as the electrical wires and circuit breakers in a house. I once heard an engineer describe the meridian system as an interstate road system connecting small towns to large cities. As these meridians travel through our bodies they connect to every aspect of our anatomy. Some people think that the meridians are the nerve pathways. This is partly true, but they are much more. The meridians also travel through the internal organs, the muscles, the tendons, the blood, and the lymphatic system. There is nowhere in the human body that the Qi, or life force, of the meridians does not influence. This is true for any living thing.

Meridians and Qi originate in us at conception.  We get our prenatal Qi from our biological parents, and then it continues to form in us through gestation.  This is what acupuncturists will call our constitution.  An acupuncturist will look at the patterns of health and illness in you to get  a sense of your constitution.  Are you generally happy and healthy or do you tend to catch every cold that goes around? These are all indicators of your constitution.

Traditional Chinese Medicine sees prenatal Qi as finite.  From the day we are born to the day we die, we use Qi and add Qi back into our bodies.   Qi is in the air we breath and the food we eat. This is why it is so important to breath fresh clean air, eat high quality food, and drink clean water. Not only do these things give us calories, protein and more, they also give us Qi.

It is when our Qi gets damaged that we have health problems. Some things that damage our Qi are stress, poor diet, accidents, and infections. My favorite instructor in school told me once, “There are three questions you can ask to figure out what is wrong with your patient. Have you been bitten by a snake or fallen from a tree? Do you feel like you are getting the flu or a cold? And are you under any unusual stress?” This is, of course, a very simplified way of looking at our health problems, but you see just how important our life style is to our health. Some people even say, “Well you wouldn’t have fallen out of that tree if you hadn’t been so stressed out!”  To look at this another way, what makes us ill are external pathogenic factors such as snake bites, viruses, bacteria, general infections, and internal pathogenic factors such as undue stress of some sort.
 
Western medicine has broken down and categorized the external pathogenic factors (EPFs) for us very well.   The following are some examples of EPFs: bacterias, viruses, yeast, and fungi.

In Chinese Medicine and acupuncture we categorize things a little differently. We have wind, cold, summer heat, damp, dryness and fire. I won’t go too deeply into these right now, but just get the idea that we see things in a more general way.

Western Medicine has also broken down and categorized internal pathogenic factors (IPFs), such as anxiety, depression, and the mental illnesses . In acupuncture and Chinese Medicine we call these a shen, or spirit, disturbance, or an imbalance in one or more of the 7 emotions: joy, anxiety, worry, sorrow, fear and fright (they are different), and anger. Each one of these emotions are related to an element, which in turn is related to an organ which has its own meridian pathway named after the organ.

The reason acupuncture works so well is because it intentionally strengthens and supports the Qi that is our life blood.    It connects to and communicates with every last inch of our bodies, inside and out. It speaks at a cellular level.  A  blood cell can communicate with a nerve cell and the nerve cell can talk to a tendon cell or an internal organ cell, all at the level of Qi.

The meridians, or pathways, for our Qi are connected to and named after our internal organs. We have the heart meridian, the kidney meridian, the spleen meridian, the liver meridian, and so on. These same meridians follow pathways from deep at the internal organ level all through our fluids, bones, muscles, nerves, and up to our skin, communicating all the way. This is where we find the acupuncture points.  The trained acupuncturist can needle, push, pull, and otherwise manipulate our Qi, reverberating all the way back through the meridians effecting every single cell in our bodies, thus balancing our Qi.

It is an amazing and powerful medicine.  And that is why acupuncture works so well.

copyright Laurie Mecham L.Ac.