Herbal medicine and acupunture are two pillars of traditional Chinese medicine, this leads to another question: how does acupuncture work?
Basically, acupuncture works by getting at the underlying cause of the problem and helping the body to heal itself. In Chinese medicine disease is seen as caused by imbalances; when we correct these imbalances, the body naturally heals and the symptom goes away.
For example, if you’re having insomnia because you’re stressed and in “fight-or-flight” survival mode, then your sympathetic nervous system may be too active and your parasympathetic system not active enough. By reducing sympathetic response and increasing the parasympathetic, the imbalance is corrected and you’ll feel more relaxed at night and able to sleep.
This approach is very different from simply taking a drug that covers up the symptoms without correcting their underlying cause. In acupuncture, we try to get at the root cause of the problem and fix it so that real healing can happen.
