5 Benefits of Acupuncture (That You Probably Didn't Know About...)

One of the things that's really interesting to me, as well as very surprising, is how often I have conversations with patients who aren't aware of what acupuncture or Chinese herbs can actually treat. So I figured in this video I would share what I think are five unique and very important, like day-to-day, very important benefits of acupuncture as well as Chinese herbs. Hey, it's Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book, Master the Day. Now I've included two very important links below this video. If you click the link right below this video, you'll have two options. One is to come see me as a patient in my private practice or in my online telemedicine practice. And the second is for a free download, which is five daily rituals that can help you potentially add 10 years to your life. There are five Chinese medicine or Taoist practices that can really help you live better. So you can check out those two resources right beneath this video. So the first benefit is parasympathetic activation. Now in school you probably learned rest and digest or fight and flight. Well rest and digest is parasympathetic mode, where your body is relaxing, your body can produce enzymes to help digestion better, and it can help you sleep and rest and recover. Now I was at Providence Hospital in Portland, Oregon for one of my shifts when I was in school. And I was actually on an oncology, so a cancer shift. And one thing that really surprised me, you know, as a student, you're not always so confident because you don't have the clinical experience yet to say, well, I'm certain this will work or I know how long this will take to work. So I just approached it with an open mind and I checked in with my supervisor. And I was really shocked to find that a lot of my patients reported that the 48 hours after acupuncture were often the only two really good nights of sleep that they had each week. And I didn't normally think of acupuncture by itself without herbs as something for sleep, but it's something that I tend to see often clinically. And I think that acupuncture is really, really effective for anything related to the nervous system, anything related to stress. So that's why it can work wonders for not only things like insomnia, mood, issues related to reproduction, like women's health, regulating the menstrual cycle, as well as digestion and bowel movements. So that was something that actually really surprised me. The second really cool benefit is that acupuncture and Chinese herbs can really help the menstrual cycle. We had this patient when I was back in school and her chief complaint was that she was trying to have a regular cycle. She was having dysmenorrhea, so pain with her menses, as well as cycles that were just going really, really long, 30, 40, 50, 60 days, or completely missing them altogether. Now we gave her acupuncture and I was surprised to find out that by the end of that shift that we were on, she actually had to leave the room and run out because she had her cycle right then and there from the acupuncture. So even though that's not that common, and obviously I don't want that to happen to my patients because it's a little embarrassing, that sometimes shows how quickly it can open the floodgates and regulate what has been dysregulated. The third really unique benefit is that it can help you poop better. Now digestive problems are probably in the top five problems I see clinically. I've suffered from lifelong digestive problems and that's actually what got me into Chinese medicine in the first place. But one of the things, again, the first point here was that acupuncture is amazing for putting your body back into rest and digest, parasympathetic, I'm on vacation, chilling with a Mai Tai mode, and that's really important for most of the conditions that we end up seeing. So bowel movements are one of those things that are also closely tied to parasympathetic or sympathetic. Most of us have experienced the feeling of having a really, really busy day or having to run out to catch a flight in the morning and then we miss our morning bowel movement or having diarrhea because there's work stress or there's some kind of life stress going on. So our bowel movements are really intimately tied with our physiological state and that state is closely tied to the state of our nervous system and our emotions. The fourth really surprising benefit of acupuncture and Chinese herbs is that they can really dramatically improve your mood. I, again, this was not something that was really on my radar before I started practicing. You know, I've been a patient for a long time and most of my own problems were really organic in the sense that they were just digestive problems. But I've had so many patients since that they say, you know, wow, I feel so calm the next day or two days or three days after treatment and I don't know why. I just feel so relaxed and so calm. Even if that wasn't the treatment goal that we were working on, that was an unintended benefit or an unintended positive side effect of the treatment. Now there are some really interesting studies that are going around on not only the speed at which acupuncture can work, but also the degree of the endorphins that are secreted and the subsequent pain killing effect that rivals many of the conventional treatments for that pain relief. Now I've thought, you know, I'm a scientist, I'm a skeptic. So I found some of those things to be quite surprising until I regularly started hearing them from my patients myself. Now the fifth surprising benefit is that surprisingly, acupuncture can make you feel way less anxious. I was going to this practitioner and my secondary complaint was this feeling of anxiety because I was having really severe insomnia. Now I never in a million years would have thought that I would have had someone put needles in my body to deal with anxiety. But if you've had acupuncture, you know that they're not really needles in the hypodermic needle sense that you associate with going to a doctor and getting, you know, a vaccine or injection or getting a blood draw, like those hurt. Acupuncture needles are not like that. They're not hollow. They're not a huge thick gauge like that because they're not designed, they don't need to be hollow to draw blood. That is not the purpose of an acupuncture needle. They're often as thin as a human hair. And I shared it in one of my previous videos here on just how big an acupuncture needle really is. But I was surprised getting treated for this anxiety that the acupuncturist at the time was doing the acupuncture and I was starting to get more and more anxious. And eventually she said, relax, hang out. And then she came back and I didn't realize I had actually fallen asleep for a half hour. And in my mind, I'm like, she put needles in my body for anxiety and I fell asleep. But that's not uncommon. In fact, I have a lot of patients with just general anxiety all the way up to severe, severe anxiety who report finally being able to be relaxed from acupuncture and from Chinese herbs. So it doesn't sound like that would be something it would work on, but it's really impressive actually clinically how well it can work. Now, those are five, what I think are fairly surprising benefits of acupuncture. Now, again, you guys, if you're interested, you want to come see me as a patient, the first link below this video is an email to get in contact with me or to directly go ahead and book a patient spot on my calendar. And there's also another link for a free PDF if you just enter your email on five daily rituals that can help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So there are these five Taoist rituals, practices you can do every single day. So you can check those two links out below this video, but before you go, don't forget to check out these two related videos here.