Acupuncture customizes treatments to meet each patient’s unique needs. Many people suffer from complex health conditions that don’t respond well to mainstream medical care. At Raleigh Acupuncture, we utilize Chinese medicine’s vast resources to heal your body and relieve pain. In addition, we provide customized patient treatments based on your specific pattern imbalance, enabling us to deliver care in the optimum fashion for your body to receive.
Chinese Medicine Diagnosis
When you arrive for your first treatment, we conduct an intake exam, asking questions about your condition and general health (sleep, digestion, mood, other pains, etc.). Most importantly, we feel your pulse and examine your tongue. Pulse assessment goes way beyond counting heartbeats per minute. Instead, we evaluate the quality of your pulse – 36 distinct pulse qualities reflect the state of your internal health.
For example, a wiry pulse indicates that you are under stress. A full, slippery pulse is a clear sign that you are pregnant. A thin pulse shows blood deficiency (the precursor to anemia). It takes years of training for a practitioner to discern the different pulse characteristics and is extremely helpful in determining a patient’s underlying pattern imbalance.
Tongue and Pulse Diagnosis
Similarly, your tongue presentation gives us a vast amount of information about the functioning of your internal organs (heart, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys, intestines, etc.). In addition, such qualities as the color of your tongue (red, pink, pale), the coating (thin and transparent, thick and greasy, white or yellow), the edges (smooth, rough, scalloped), and the tip (red, peeled, coated) reveal essential data about everything from your digestion to your emotions.
Armed with this information, we determine your Chinese medicine pattern diagnosis and a specific roadmap of the internal imbalances responsible for your disease or pain. From here, we create a treatment plan to correct those imbalances. This plan includes an acupuncture point prescription, Chinese herbal formula, or both. Next, we begin treatment. All of this takes place during your first visit to our clinic.
Acupuncture Treatment Delivery
Recognizing your pattern imbalance is the first step in crafting a successful treatment plan. Equally important is understanding the best method of treatment. Acupuncture customizes treatments because each patient is unique.
For example, some people need strong treatments – their bodies are less sensitive, and standard treatments don’t have much effect on them. Alternatively, other patients are sensitive and experience adverse reactions to standard strength treatments. Acupuncture customizes treatments by providing individual plans for each patient, assuring they receive the right point prescription and the optimal delivery strength to maximize effectiveness.
Strong Versus Gentle Treatment
What makes an acupuncture treatment strong versus gentle, and how can the practitioner tell who needs which type? During your intake exam, we ask questions about your health. Your acupuncturist is like Sherlock Holmes investigating a crime scene – we look for details. In fact, some of the most important keys to understanding a patient’s health and unlocking their path to healing involve subtle characteristics – the tone of voice, level of eye contact, gait (how someone moves), and breathing pattern. It doesn’t take long for a well-trained acupuncturist to know the best way to approach treatment for their patient.
Acupuncture Flexibility Enhances Outcomes
Acupuncture is flexible in its approach to healing. Every health condition has multiple treatment paths, and a skilled practitioner can provide what is best for each patient. For example, a patient recently came to our clinic complaining of peripheral neuropathy. We have developed a highly effective protocol for resolving numbness and burning in the feet; this is the treatment we gave her on her first visit.
Upon her return the following week, she reported no improvement. Accordingly, we adjusted her treatment. Sure enough, a week later, our patient reported significant improvement. In this case, the standard treatment was too intense – by eliminating electrostimulation, her body was more responsive and accepting, and her pain began to decrease. Within six sessions, her neuropathy was gone. The point prescription was correct in this example, but treatment strength had to be adjusted.
Modified Migraine Treatment
Another patient came to Raleigh Acupuncture presenting with frequent, intense migraine headaches. She had tried many treatment modalities with limited success, including various prescription medications, botox injections, dry needling, psychotherapy, and hypnosis. Our standard migraine protocol worked well initially, but then the migraines reasserted themselves. So we introduced a second protocol with a similar time-limited effect.
By this point, we had developed a more robust sense of how her migraines worked – their root cause, triggers, and cycles. Armed with this understanding, we applied the tools of Chinese medicine to derive a unique treatment (never performed on any other patient), which relieved her pain and gave her lasting relief. In fact, this new protocol was so successful that we now use it on other migraine patients who are resistant to standard care.
Customized Treatments for Complex Cases
Customizing patient treatments is essential when dealing with non-standard presentations of common ailments like neck pain, back pain, hip pain, migraines, and digestive issues (stomach pain, IBS, bloating, reflux, etc.) When the standard of care is ineffective, we adjust, modify, and adapt until we find a better path. As a result, very few patients leave our clinic unsatisfied – largely because acupuncture customizes treatments so effectively.
Customization is also needed when tackling more complex autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, lupus, and ulcerative colitis.
Rich History of Experience
Acupuncture successfully treats these conditions because we have so many tools at our disposal. We can create a treatment plan based on multiple theories that have developed over thousands of years, including:
- zang-fu organ theory
- channel theory
- extraordinary vessel theory
- yin yang theory
- jing qi blood and fluids
- six principles theory
- eight principals theory
Think of these theories as schools of thought or think tanks of the ancient world. A group of gifted Chinese medicine practitioners would form a school, develop treatment strategies, and treat patients applying their distinct approach. One school would take previous generations’ theories and build on them, making them their own.
Many Roads To Healing
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) does not rely on a zero-sum approach, where each new discovery cancels out or negates a previous one. Instead, in TCM, theories and schools of thought can co-exist, intertwine and enhance each other. The goal is to provide the best patient outcome, no matter the approach. And in fact, the large variety of methods improves outcomes because you can pick and choose based on what will help your patient the most.
Try acupuncture to address that nagging, chronic health condition that’s been troubling you for so long. Be open to a system of medicine quite different from Western medicine yet highly effective in its own right. With a 2500-year history, TCM has the depth of experience to tackle thorny health issues that have been unresponsive to standard care.
Acupuncture Customizes Treatments
Furthermore, the fact that acupuncture customizes treatments guarantees you’ll receive the best treatment FOR YOU. Acupuncture is the opposite of our culture’s “one pill for all” approach. In fact, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the detail of care and attention your practitioner shows when treating you.
Next Steps
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