Acupuncture is Complementary Medicine

In its theoretical foundations, acupuncture offers an alternative to the conventional medical view of disease and healing, but in its practice acupuncture is a true complementary therapy, working well alongside many conventional medical treatments and serving as a support for patients receiving medical care. 

There are many ways in which acupuncture can serve as a complement to conventional medical treatments: 

• Acupuncture is a drug free therapy that will not conflict with prescription medication or create unpredictable drug interactions 
• Acupuncture can enhance the effectiveness of prescription medication by 
• helping with absorption and elimination of medications 
• helping medications reach their target areas 
• reducing side effects of medications, such as the long term effects of antibiotics on the digestive system 
• Acupuncture can enhance the effectiveness of surgical procedures by 
• preparing patients who are awaiting surgery, strengthening immune and digestive functioning and calming a patient’s mental state 
•  supporting patients following surgery, reducing the risk of complications and infections, helping the body eliminate drugs used for anaesthesia, reducing pain and speeding up tissue regeneration 
• Acupuncture can be done distally, so the placement of needles can be away from problem areas in the body, avoiding conflicts with local treatments, surgical scars, open wounds, inflamed tissues, broken bones and bandages 
• Acupuncture can be done when one is awaiting diagnostic testing or waiting to receive a medical diagnosis 
• Acupuncture can be of therapeutic benefit when a condition is deemed not medically serious enough to warrant a strong medical intervention 
• Acupuncture can treat symptoms even when the cause is unknown or when there is no medical agreement on the diagnosis 
• Acupuncture can help reduce the stress experienced when a patient is overwhelmed by the complexities and uncertainties of his or her medical care

Many family doctors and medical specialists are open to their patients receiving acupuncture alongside their medically prescribed treatments. Acupuncturists in Ontario are regulated health professionals who can be in communication with a patient’s medical team, advising them on the nature of the acupuncture treatments being given and providing them with updates on their patients’ progress.

The Healing Focus

The body is its own healer, designed to endure and recover from injury and illness throughout the course of its life. It does so continuously, without medical intervention, and usually without our even being aware of it. The recognition of this fact is the starting point and first principle of any true holistic therapy. 

We turn to outside medical intervention when there’s a specific injury or illness that the body can’t seem to deal with on its own. It’s our natural tendency, when faced with a problem, to lose sight of the big picture and focus on what’s wrong. As a result, the first impulse of medical intervention is often to zero in on an injury or illness in a very narrow way, and to forget that disease always appears against the backdrop of a highly evolved and complex ongoing effort by the body to heal itself.

Acupuncture is a true holistic therapy in the sense that it works by stimulating the body’s own healing mechanisms rather than trying to address problems directly. The needles used in acupuncture treatments don’t supply the body with any kind of medicine. In fact, they appear to introduce a new kind of injury for the body to deal with. Yet somehow the needles have the effect of refocusing the body’s own efforts to heal itself, as if injecting a new kind of intelligence into this process.

The true healing focus is not the narrow focus of typical medical intervention, but one that steps back and views physical injury and illness more broadly. What is interfering with the body’s own efforts to heal itself? Have digestive and immune functioning become sluggish? Has blood flow and circulation to parts of the body been reduced? Has communication with parts of the central nervous system been cut off? These same questions apply to every situation in which the body appears to be struggling and unable to cope with an injury or illness on its own. A true holistic therapy always keeps these basic questions in view, and in doing so maintains a respect for the integrity and intelligence of the body’s own healing capacity. 

The Work Of Recovery

Recovery from an illness or injury can take place slowly or quickly, fully or just partially. The rate and extent of recovery says a lot about the state of a person's health. While it’s true that a person can sometimes function well enough having only partly recovered from a bout of flu, or that one should expect to have lingering pain and decreased mobility for months or even years after a serious injury, the fact is that for many of us, if we take the time and really try to meet the body's needs following the acute phase of illness, recovery can take place more quickly and completely. 

The danger we face when we make do with only partial recovery from an injury or illness is that we can become accustomed to a lower state of functioning in the body. Months can turn to years, years can turn to decades, and the memory of what it felt like to move well and feel good in one's body eventually fades. 

A period of poor health can serve as an opportunity to revisit the state of one's physical well being and renew an effort to raise the level of functioning of the body. Eventually we are fated to succumb to the loss of functioning that comes with aging, but for now everything we can do to help raise the level of our physical well being benefits us as well as the people around us. The body has stood by us faithfully for so many years, so it's the least we can do for it in return. 

Hitting The Reset Button

When something doesn’t go right with any kind of electrical equipment, appliance or computer device, the first step to dealing with the problem is to shut it down and restart it. Often this is enough to correct the problem. So too with the body, which encounters difficulties all the time such as unexpected stresses, physical injuries and inexplicable malfunctions. The first step to addressing such problems is to stop and let the body’s natural healing mechanisms take over. 

Nighttime sleep is one way in which the body resets itself. We also turn to physical exercise, a nap, quiet sitting, yoga, a massage or even a glass of wine to turn off the engine of life for just a short time before we get back into the driver’s seat and start things up again. During this down time the body’s restorative functions have an opportunity to turn their attention to the needs of the body that were neglected during the day’s busy activities.  

One feature of modern medicine is that it can place great demands on the body without providing support to the body’s restorative functioning. Medically prescribed therapies such as surgery and prescription medications often place new stresses on the body, have unexpected side effects, and can depress immune functioning. 

In contrast, acupuncture works mainly as a support to the body’s restorative mechanisms, boosting immune functioning and speeding up the healing process. Because of its calming effect on the nervous system it can reduce stress levels in the body and clear the interference that stress imposes on the body’s restorative functioning. In this regard, an acupuncture treatment has a similar effect to hitting the reset button on an electrical device.

During or immediately after an acupuncture treatment most patients report feeling very relaxed and even sleepy. Some describe the effect of the needles as inducing a deep meditative state. It is not unusual for patients to fall asleep during a treatment, or to report feeling that the body has become very heavy as if it has sunk down into the treatment table. 

Acupuncture gives the body an opportunity to let something go and renew itself. Muscles become more relaxed, tensions are released, and constrictions around organs and nerves are relieved. This allows for increased blood flow to areas in the body that need repair, increased transmission of signals through the peripheral and central nervous system, and smoother flow of energy through the subtle pathways known as acupuncture channels.

Toxicity And Imbalance

We live in a world that abounds in toxic substances. Some of these substances accumulate in the body and cause disease. Chinese medicine regards many substances as toxic which are not recognized as such in conventional medicine. Often these are substances which in their right measure are naturally occurring in the body and even necessary for the maintenance of health, but in excess or deficiency destabilize the body and lead to disease. 

In acupuncture and Chinese medicine poor health is regarded as a state of imbalance which arises when there is either too much or too little of something in relation to the needs of a particular organ or system in the body. In some cases we can name these substances, but sometimes all we can do is identify their qualities or their destabilizing effects. The language used in Chinese medicine to describe these qualities or effects can seem almost poetic: moves like wind or burns like fire. Identifying just the qualities or effects of a toxic substance is in many cases sufficient for diagnosing and treating an imbalance. 

Every organ in the body is prone to some form of imbalance, but each has its own characteristic tendencies and vulnerabilities. The Stomach, for example, is prone to overheating and to dryness, although in some case it can become too cold. The Spleen/Pancreas, on the other hand, almost never overheats but is frequently prone to overcooling and the accumulation of undigested food substances which have cold and damp qualities. Both dryness and dampness are imbalances related to substances with the quality of moistness - dryness reflecting a deficiency of such substances and dampness reflecting an excessive accumulation.

A state of imbalance in the body can have many causes, both external as well as internal. External causes include exposure to certain environmental conditions such as extreme heat, cold or wind, as well as exposure to microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses. Perhaps the most common external cause of imbalance is the excessive consumption certain types of foods which weaken or overwhelm the digestive organs. Internal factors that cause imbalance generally relate to past injuries or constitutional weaknesses which predispose particular organs or systems to states of excess or deficiency. 

It can happen that substances which have accumulated to toxic levels in one part of the body will travel to other parts of the body and disrupt normal functioning there. For example, inflammation of the joints is sometimes due to an accumulation of a substance produced to excess in the digestive system. It is often difficult to make a direct link between the source of a toxin and the place in the body where it accumulates, and this can lead to difficulties in diagnosing and treating the true cause of a disease. 

If we could incorporate some of the Chinese medical understanding of imbalance into our daily lives we would probably make better choices when it comes to taking care of our health. For example, if we understood that an excessive accumulation of cold substances in the body can prove just as toxic to some people as an excessive accumulation of heat, we would likely avoid eating certain foods to prevent overcooling in the digestive system. We would probably also be able to identify states of imbalance at earlier stages, which would allow us to take steps to treat them before they develop into full blown disease.

The Secret Lives Of Our Internal Organs

The health of the internal organs is a primary focus of any acupuncture treatment. In Chinese medicine there are twelve internal organs that are of interest, five of which serve as the foundation of a person’s health: the Heart, Spleen, Lungs, Kidneys and Liver.

Each organ lives what might be called a double life - a life in the world of the physical body as well as a life in the world of subtle energy. In the world of the physical body modern medicine has achieved a detailed understanding of how each of the internal organs functions, and has discovered many methods for assessing the health of the organs. For modern medicine, however, the lives that the organs lead in the world of subtle energy remains mostly unknown.


In the world of subtle energy each of the internal organs functions much like a digestive organ - taking in coarse material that it refines and transforms. Once transformed, this material is then transmitted back out into the world or passed on to another organ for further processing. The material that each organ processes in the world of subtle energy is not what we ordinarily think of as material, and corresponds to things like sounds, tastes, colors and emotions.


The health of the internal organs is affected by what takes place in both the physical world as well as the world of subtle energy. If an organ is injured as a result of an accident or weakened by a chronically poor diet, that organ’s functioning at a subtle energetic level will be affected. Similarly, if an organ’s subtle energy is disrupted as a result of an emotional disturbance, the organ’s functioning at a physical level will also be affected. 


The body's subtle energy both influences and is influenced by what takes place at the physical level, and each of the internal organs could be said to serve as an intermediary between these two worlds. When deciding how to treat a patient, an acupuncturist assesses how well the major organs carry out their functions in each of these worlds. It may be that an organ seems to function quite well on a physical level, but is weakened by an imbalance at a subtle energetic level. If the energetic imbalance is not corrected, it will eventually affect the organ's functioning at a physical level. 


I encourage patients to get acupuncture as soon as possible after suffering an illness or injury. This is because a recent problem at the physical level is less likely to have disturbed the body's subtle energy as compared to a long standing problem. With injuries and illnesses of recent onset, acupuncture can help bring about a swift recovery by guiding the patient's subtle energy to correct the problem at the physical level. 


For more information about ORI LEVY Dipl. Ac. click on the link: www.healingwithacupuncture.ca

Spring Liver Detox

With the coming of spring some may be considering a liver cleanse of one kind or another. It's interesting to consider that in acupuncture and Chinese medicine there really is no such thing as a liver cleanse. True, spring is the time when the energy of the liver awakens, so indeed this might be an excellent time to consider the health of your liver. Yet clearing the liver of toxins is unlikely to be the main focus of an acupuncture treatment.


The liver is a very complex organ which is involved in storing and cleansing the blood as well as ensuring the free flow of subtle energy throughout the body. Under certain conditions the liver can become congested and a state of toxicity might result. Liver congestion is often associated with hormonal imbalance and heat toxicity. Restoring liver health can involve clearing heat, freeing the flow of subtle energy, moving blood as well as ensuring that the supply of blood to the liver is sufficient. It is a complex organ to treat that may involve treating other organs alongside the liver, such as the spleen or kidneys. For this reason one is unlikely to come across simple one-size-fits-all prescriptions or cleanses for the Liver in the context of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. 


Any attention we give to our bodies is probably helpful, so indeed it might be quite beneficial to undergo some kind of liver cleanse as we approach the change of season this year. The view in Chinese medicine, however, is a broader one that considers how the state of each of the major organs, not just the liver, contributes to a person's overall health. Sometimes focusing one one organ or one aspect of a person's health without keeping the larger picture in view can create more problems than it solves. 

The Needles Communicate (Part 2)

Acupuncture is considered a form of bodywork that works with energy. For some illnesses the body may need new energy to heal. For other illnesses the body may need energy to be released, or simply to move. Along with influencing the body’s energy, however, it may be that acupuncture treatments speak directly to the brain and supply it with another form of medicine, that is, with information that it needs to properly coordinate a healing response to an illness or injury. Information is not usually regarded as medicine, but I will try to explain how it can serve as such.

There are some common illnesses today, such as various inflammatory conditions, autoimmune diseases and stress disorders, in which the body’s own healing mechanism seems to have turned against itself. Allergies, asthma and rheumatic arthritis are among a long list of conditions which are recognized today as being caused not by some outside pathogen but by an immune response that seems to have gone off track. Rather than protecting the body, the immune system in such cases seems to be making the person sick. 

What could be going on in such illnesses? How is it that the brain’s picture of the body could become so distorted that it would direct one part of the body to attack another part? Modern medicine typically treats such diseases with medications that suppress immune functioning, as if the brain has lost the intelligence to coordinate an immune response on its own. These medications don’t treat the root of the disease but generally slow its progress and decrease the severity of its symptoms. 

Perhaps in addition to medication, what the body really needs in such cases is information. The brain may need to become informed that the part of the body that the immune system is attacking is related to the part it is trying to protect. It is a mystery why the brain would be lacking this information, but presumably if there was a way to provide it with this information, it would begin to take steps to correct the problem on its own. 

I’m not suggesting that acupuncture alone be used to treat serious cases of autoimmune disease, but it seems to me that the possibilities that acupuncture presents should not be dismissed too quickly by modern medicine. In my own clinical experience I have treated many people suffering from seasonal allergies, food sensitivities, asthma and various chronic inflammatory conditions with a high rate of success, indicating to me that indeed acupuncture can ‘speak to the brain’ and influence the way the body coordinates its immune functioning. 

The Needles Communicate (Part 1)

Patients sometimes ask whether acupuncture is really just Shiatsu or acupressure with needles instead of massage. I answer that yes, they are similar, as they rely on the same points and channel system developed in China several thousand years ago, yet they are different in their mechanism and therapeutic effect. In my opinion acupuncture needles communicate something unique to the body that other forms of bodywork do not. I will try to illustrate this with an example. 

I recently treated a patient with an old arm injury that had flared up. As an acupuncturist there are many ways I can approach treating such an injury, one of which is to treat it as a local problem and only place needles near the site of injury. In the case of an arm injury, I would limit the placement of needles to the injured arm only, on points that correspond to the pathway of acupuncture channels affected by the injury. As it turns out, this approach did not produce much benefit to the patient, so at one of the following sessions I tried a different approach. I needled several acupuncture points on each of the four limbs, without placing special emphasis on the injured arm. The patient reported improvement the next day. We continued with this approach for several more treatments and the patient reported further improvement each time. 

Why would a more 'global' treatment approach prove more effective than local treatments in this particular case? There could be several explanations for this, but I would suggest the following:

When the body suffers a local injury, the body’s immediate response is to isolate the site of injury from the rest of the body. This is done as a precaution, probably before there has been a chance to really assess the nature and scope of the injury. For some kinds of injuries, for example, bleeding or poisoning, time is of the essence and it makes sense to take measures to protect the healthy parts of the body and prevent a local injury from turning into a systemic problem. This isolation of the injured part - what I will call the isolation reaction - seems to take place quite automatically at several levels of functioning, including neural, circulatory, and even psychological. Local swelling around a site of injury is an example of this isolation reaction.

In particular cases it may be that isolating a local injury is not at all useful, or it may be that it is useful for only a definite time. Eventually, whether it be after a few minutes, several hours, or even many weeks, the isolation reaction needs to subside so that the injured part can be reintegrated with the functioning of the body as a whole.  Often this reintegration takes place without issue and recovery from an injury is complete. However, in the case of many chronic injuries, the isolation reaction never fully subsides, resulting in only partial reintegration and recovery.

Acupuncture, as with many other kinds of bodywork, seems to help stimulate the process of reintegration. The manner by which acupuncture promotes reintegration sets it apart, in my opinion, from other forms of bodywork, and it seems to do so in the following way: 
  
During an acupuncture treatment, several needles - perhaps a dozen or more - are inserted into acupuncture points and kept there for 20-40 minutes. With the needles in place something quite incredible begins to happen: the needles begin communicating with one another, and collectively, begin communicating with the brain. What is it that the needles communicate? I suspect that they are relaying information to one another, and collectively to the brain, about how different parts of the body are related to the whole. It is this information about relationship that the brain needs to fully let go of the isolation reaction. 

In the case of my patient who benefited from global rather than local treatments, it seems to me that the treatments worked because the needles communicated something to brain about how the injured arm was related to the other limbs, and to the functioning of the body as a whole. Once this information was relayed, the brain was able to initiate a healing response on its own. 

Acupuncture Is Practical Medicine

Healing the body is both a noble aim, and for many people, a practical necessity. Caring for the body over the course of a lifetime is a responsibility, and indeed it is a noble aim to try to carry out this responsibility to the best of one’s ability. Each of us has the task, beginning in childhood and continuing through to the end of our life, of coming to our own understanding of just how much attention needs to be devoted to caring for the body so that it functions well in life. 

Some people invest a great deal of time and energy to the maintenance of their physical health - rigidly keeping to a perfect diet, exercising for hours a day, undergoing purifying cleanses, taking many kinds of supplements - and perhaps for such people the body is like a jewel that that needs to be polished regularly. Other people seem to attend to the body just enough to get by, and perhaps for them the body is more like a servant or slave who should require as little of one’s attention as possible.

The approach to physical health within the Acupuncture and Chinese medical tradition is  a kind of ‘middle way’ between these two extremes. While Westerners who hear talk of Qi, Yin and Yang might have the impression that acupuncturists relate to the body in an esoteric or other worldly manner, the fact is that this approach to medicine is grounded in the practical considerations and Earthly demands of ordinary life. It is neither interested in creating super-humans nor in promoting ideological extremes about the body and physical health. 

From a Chinese medical point of view, physical health could be boiled down to just a few simple and practical considerations:

● Do I have enough energy to fulfill my daily work and family responsibilities? 

● Is the food I eat being absorbed and eliminated properly? 

● Is sleep restorative? 

● Is there anything in the body - pain, discomfort, illness or injury - that is interfering with my ability to appreciate and take pleasure in ordinary life?

While physical health alone is of course not sufficient to leading a happy and fulfilled life, a healthy and stable body can serve as a support for maintaining emotional and psychological health. A chronically unhealthy body can destabilize a person’s mental health, and recovery from a physical illness can bring hope and new energy to one struggling with emotional and psychological difficulties. 

Acupuncture: Medicine Without All The Answers

The Intention of this Blog is to explore questions and topics that should be of interest to most of us about healing and living in this world with a physical body. My feeling is that acupuncture can serve as a great bridge between the practical and the esoteric, being both a most useful and versatile physical therapy, as well as a storehouse of ancient knowledge about the subtle workings of the body and its relation to the larger cosmos. 

Acupuncture works despite the fact that we don't have a full understanding of its mechanism. Of course, it's not acupuncture but the body itself that is a great mystery. And being a great mystery, the body should be approached - even by doctors - with deference and wonder. One way in which we often show disregard for this great mystery is by imposing our ideas and answers upon it. We demand things of the body based on a limited knowledge of its workings, without really understanding its needs or its limits. We have difficulty seeing and understanding things from the body's point of view, and this can lead to illness and injury. 

My feeing is that acupuncture is so effective - and safe - because it doesn't make demands or impose ideas on the body. The needles do not in themselves heal, but rather indicate to the body's healing control center that some action needs to be taken. The needles provoke a healing response from the brain, like a request coming from outside for the body's own intelligence to awaken and respond to a need it somehow did not recognize. The needles, and the particular form of stimulation they give, seem to speak in a language that the body understands. 

My hope is that these writings will  provoke thought and inspire people who have not yet explored the vast world of acupuncture as a healing therapy to give it a try. I see acupuncture as a hidden gem in these dark medical times - a low cost and versatile therapy without side effects. Much is to be learned about the body from delving deeper into the healing mechanism of acupuncture, and the purpose of this blog is to serve as a forum for such a study.