How Does Acupuncture work for IBS?

I didn’t know much about acupuncture when I was sick, but I heard good things and was willing to try anything.

If you Google alternative therapies for IBS, acupuncture often comes up as a solution for easing IBS-related symptoms and pain.

Acupuncture originated in China and uses needles (they don’t hurt) to move stagnant energy through the body.

While Western medicine considers IBS to be a problem of the small and large intestine, Chinese medicine views it as an imbalance in the spleen, coupled with liver stagnation. However, it treats the whole body to achieve health.

Because Chinese medicine works with energy excess and deficiency and the polarity of Yin and Yang, an acupuncture-based diagnosis can make little sense to the Western mind.

What does it mean to have damp heat in the liver or a deficient spleen? The jargon of acupuncture stressed me out a bit because I didn’t fully understand what was being said.

For example, every time I went in for a treatment, my acupuncturist looked at my cracked tongue, checked my pulse and frowned.

My pulse was always described as thready (a disturbing word) and the color and texture of my  tongue was a mess by Chinese medical standards, even though it looked like that since birth.

I was put off by the foreign and confusing nature of acupuncture. I always got bad news about the state of my pulse and tongue at the start of each session.

It makes me wonder if starting each session off with negative news impacted the effectiveness of the treatment? I went in feeling like I was not improving because of my weak pulse and freaky tongue.

 

My experience

Acupuncture is more effective if used in tandem with Chinese herbs, dietary guidelines and lifestyle changes.

Since I didn’t know that, I used acupuncture as my only treatment.  And my results were disappointing despite sticking to it for almost a year and getting frequent treatments.

But looking back at this experience, I realize that acupuncture alone was never going to fix my problem. It was just too subtle for balancing the deep imbalances of my system, caused by leaky gut and bacterial overgrowth.

I had to use nutrition, supplements and good old fashioned rest to tackle those problems.

 

What acupuncture works well for…

Acupuncture boosts the circulation of healing fluids like blood and lymph through the body. As these fluids flow, energy (called “chi” in Chinese medicine) moves with them.

Stagnant fluids and swampy pools of energy are caused primarily by muscle tensions, which are caused by emotional tensions. Increasing fluid and energy circulation through the body can speed up the healing and detoxification process.

Acupuncture helps balance the body in subtle ways, by helping it recover from stress, balancing hormones and alleviating the damage done by stress.

While acupuncture is not likely to work miracles by itself, it can be a great compliment to a healing program. Especially if stress and emotional issues contribute to the health problem.

 

My positive experience with acupuncture

Years after healing my digestion I tried acupuncture again. This time to help settle my body down after an emotional trauma. I was in such a state of stress that my body temperature shot up and I couldn’t eat or sleep. Because the cause was emotional, acupuncture worked miraculously to bring my body temperature down and calm my body so I could function.

I believe that acupuncture, like hypnosis, is extremely healing to the nervous system.

If the cause of IBS is infection, food allergy, toxicity or a compromised gut lining then all the acupuncture in the world isn’t going to get the job done. But it can help with the emotional fall out of being sick and the stresses of life and healing.

 

Self acupuncture

The effectiveness of acupuncture relies heavily on the practitioner. Acupuncture is an extremely precise and intuitive treatment, so finding an experienced and talented acupuncturist can be the difference between great or disappointing results.

The good news is that you can practice acupuncture principles on yourself without using needles. You can move energy through your body by simply using your mind coupled with certain postures and movements.

Tai chi is a moving meditation that has similar effects on the nervous system as acupuncture.  Chi Gong is very similar to tai chi. They both use the same Chinese medical principles as acupuncture to move healing energy through the body’s invisible channels and meridians.

The big difference between acupuncture and chi gong/tai chi is the level of activity. With self acupuncture you must learn how to move your body to heal. With regular acupuncture all you have to do is lie of the table and relax.

Which works better? It depends on you. Do you prefer learning how to move or resting while you are taken care of? If you are afraid of needles then acupuncture would be a counter productive choice, causing extra stress. Or you can do both if you can’t decide.

I like that Traditional Chinese medicine treats the body as a whole system. It makes a lot more sense than targeting one organ or a specific symptom.

Everything in the body is connected. A lot more connected that we even imagine. That is why a holistic approach, working with the body, mind and emotions at the same time is always the best approach.

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