A brief look at what acupuncture is and how it helps anxiety.
Acupuncture has long been around as an alternative treatment option. It is an ancient technique that can be used to treat anything from pains in certain areas to generalized stress problems, including acupuncture for anxiety. This is because when the mind and emotions experience anxiety, so does the body. The body reacts to the stress of anxiety in a number of ways. One of those ways is to tense up. Other reactions include loss of sleep, increased blood pressure, weight gain, and a weakened immune system. However, some of these ancient techniques, acupuncture in particular, are still used today to treat anxiety and is even highly recommended by those in the alternative medicine field.
What is acupuncture?
Acupuncture stems from the ancient Chinese medical belief that the flow of energy through the body dictates a person’s health and well being, both spiritually and physically. If one of the energy pathways becomes blocked for any reason then the body will begin to exhibit physical symptoms. These pathways can easily be hindered by strong emotions such as anger or anxiety, but using acupuncture for anxiety can unblock these pathways, allowing the healing energy to once again flow freely.
It involves the placement of needles into certain pressure points. These pressure points are located at specific points all over the body and accessing them allows the blocked energy passageways to open back up. If these passageways remain blocked, other parts of the body may affected as well, as is the case with stress. When stress invades the body, it blocks the flow of energy so that shoulder muscles tense up, blood pressure can rise, and other physical symptoms can be felt as well.
How does acupuncture for anxiety work?
In the modern world, especially the Western hemisphere, the art of acupuncture is not seen as working because of its ability to unblock an energy flow. Rather, the use of acupuncture for anxiety is seen as working because it is able to alleviate stress points, thus relaxing the body. It does so because the body releases certain chemicals known as endorphins. These endorphins flood the body and lesson the signal of pain to the brain. Not to mention, a sudden endorphin rush is much like an adrenaline rush—the chemical rush causes a relaxation effect of the tense muscles. The endorphins released also cause the brain to slow down the rate of the heart, which also decreases high blood pressure. The relaxation effect decreases the amount of anxiety that is felt.
What do the other benefits of acupuncture include?
Besides relying on the use of acupuncture for anxiety, acupuncture has many other uses as well. It can reportedly help alleviate pain in specific parts of the body by finding the acupuncture point that corresponds to the pained area. Some individuals even claim that acupuncture can help with headache pain and chronic lower back pain. Aside from pain, some believe that acupuncture helps alleviate nausea a well. And, traditionalists would advocate that acupuncture can help make a woman more fertile by opening up certain energy pathways that block fertility. However, there is more scientific evidence to back up the use of acupuncture for anxiety than there is to back up other some uses of it.
