Acupuncture
When people hear the word acupuncture, they usually imagine many metal needles being inserted in many points on the body—that’s how acupuncture is depicted in the media. While in ancient times, needles were quite thick and their insertion was accompanied by noticeable discomfort or even pain, nowadays acupuncture feels different. What is difficult to see in photos in magazines, on websites, or in movies is that acupuncture needles vary greatly in length and thickness, and some needles are only slightly thicker than human hair. Also, depending on the method used, the number of needles inserted during an acupuncture session can vary greatly from one or two needles to several dozen. At the Advanced Holistic Center, in our Downtown Miami acupuncture and Miami Beach acupuncture branches, our specialists recognize that what each person can expect depends a lot on that individual as well as on his or her acupuncture practitioner. Due to the holistic nature of acupuncture, however, if you worry about needle insertion being painful—even though, in reality, you will usually barely feel the insertion—it already represents a symptom, and your acupuncturist will take it under consideration when he or she will be designing a treatment for you, which, in some instances, will not even involve needles.
What Acupuncture Is Good for?
Every day new research studies demonstrate new benefits of acupuncture therapy, with rare and typically insignificant side effects. Many studies, for example, show that acupuncture can be effective for relief of nausea caused by chemotherapy or pregnancy, and in both instances, acupuncture is an important alternative to pharmacological treatment; acupuncture doesn’t increase the strain on the patient’s liver, and it does not interact with other forms of treatment. Acupuncture also proved to be effective in the treatment of infertility in both men and women. Research has shown that acupuncture is an effective additional modality and can improve the outcome of medical treatments, such as physical therapy, pharmacological treatment, or recovery after surgeries, and many studies demonstrate that even such common afflictions as neck, shoulder, knee, or back pain can be improved by combining methods, more than each individual method can help when used alone. In other words, acupuncture has largely become a supplementary medical approach. At the same time, from the classical perspective, acupuncture has always been a complete medical system, and its inclusion in integrative medicine is a new approach to treatment. The reason for acupuncture’s independence has to do with the holistic nature of this ancient method. Classically trained acupuncturists do not treat maladies; they treat the individual, whose organism, as it becomes optimally balanced, should heal better, and at the Advanced Holistic Center in our Downtown Miami acupuncture and Miami Beach acupuncture branches, we bring to our patients the most effective methods from both ancient as well as latest scientific methods.
How Does Acupuncture Work?
From modern scientific viewpoint, several theories have been proposed over the years. The authors of an article published in the International Journal of Neuroscience, for example, state “It has been determined that endomorphin-1, beta-endorphin, encephalin, and serotonin levels increase in plasma and brain tissue through acupuncture application.” Another article, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine says, “Recent data, obtained by using functional magnetic resonance imaging, suggest that acupuncture has regionally specific, quantifiable effects on relevant brain structures. Acupuncture may stimulate gene expression of neuropeptides.” Acupuncture has become a popular pain-relieving method, but its mechanism remains unclear, and so is the mechanism of pain, which has been studied in-depth and appears to have a large psychological component to the actual perception of pain. At the Advanced Holistic Center, in our Downtown Miami acupuncture and Miami Beach acupuncture branches, we are aware that while scientists discover more and more about acupuncture as well as the conditions that it can treat, a modern scientific approach often ignores the point of view of traditional Chinese medicine and, specifically, acupuncture, which aims at restoring the optimal balance among the organs in an organism. Such a traditional, somewhat folk medicine’s standpoint, the approach makes it difficult to outline the exact mechanism of how acupuncture works, but the thousands of years of acupuncture’s existence suggest that its mechanism, whatever it is, can be useful in many circumstances, and modern scientific research often confirms its efficacy.
Something Else
Advanced Holistic Center is a NYC based acupuncture and holistic healthcare clinic. Advanced Holistic Center has more locations and longer open hours than almost any complementary and alternative healthcare facility in all of NYC. With four offices manned by our fully licensed and board certified acupuncturists and herbalists, a team of highly-qualified: assistants, meditation teachers.
Does Acupuncture Work Immediately?
Different patients report the different speeds of experiencing relief after an acupuncture treatment, but typically results can be expected after between 3 and 10 treatments. Interestingly enough, quick relief can be unstable, and symptoms may gradually come back after a day or two, but a few more sessions can make patients feel better and stay better for longer periods of time. At the same time, at the Advanced Holistic Center, in the Downtown Miami acupuncture and Miami Beach acupuncture branches, we make sure that individual acupuncturists have various tricks up their sleeves and often can reduce certain symptoms either quickly or keep them from coming back for longer. Also, every patient is different and so are each person’s circumstances, and immediate relief in one patient does not mean a similar outcome in another patient, but from the traditional standpoint, those patients who use acupuncture regularly as a preventative measure are less susceptible to having health issues and become more aware of acupuncture’s effects on them, individually.
Acupuncture Point Injection Therapy
While Acupuncture Point Injection Therapy has been invented and developed in China, it has become very popular during the past decade in the west. It involves the injection of various liquid substances and compounds, such as vitamins, bee venom, Chinese herbal extractions, Western medications, vitamins, and even regular saline solution. Research has demonstrated that this method can be effective in a wide range of diseases and conditions, predominantly those involving pain. In China, it is commonly used, and increasingly more publications describe the method’s efficacy as well as best techniques and practices. The practitioners at the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown Miami Acupuncture Point Injection Therapy and Miami Beach Acupuncture Point Injection Therapy branches stay up to date with the latest findings and offer our patients the most effective best-suited techniques.
Ozone Injections
Among modern cosmetic procedures, ozone injections are among the most effective, and their versatility makes this procedure popular. Ozone injections can treat localized fat, cellulite, tissue rejuvenation, skin tissue repair, acne, dyschromia, among other conditions. What makes ozone special is that, as a review recently published in the Journal of Biosciences and Medicines, “ozone therapy has added a lot to aesthetic procedures, mainly for its effective supporting action or as the main agent of critical physiological changes to enhance clinical results when treating aesthetic conditions.” At the Advanced Holistic Center’s Downtown ozone injections and Miami Beach ozone injections branches, our practitioners recognize the benefits of ozone injections, and we offer this procedure to our patients, when appropriate.
Does it hurt?
Advanced Holistic Center is a NYC based acupuncture and holistic healthcare clinic. Advanced Holistic Center has more locations and longer open hours than almost any complementary and alternative healthcare facility in all of NYC. With four offices manned by our fully licensed and board certified acupuncturists and herbalists, a team of highly-qualified: assistants, meditation teachers.