Treating Inflammation with Acupuncture and Other Natural Methods Inflammation is part of the body’s natural immune response to injury or invasion by what the body perceives as dangerous pathogens that can cause disease. While inflammation can be crucial to the body’s natural healing processes, prolonged or unnecessary inflammation can also wreak havoc on the body, leading to many maladies, such as chronic pain, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune diseases, certain cancers, and many more. Western medicine does provide treatment for inflammatory conditions, such as antiinflammatory drugs, like NSAIDS and corticosteroids. These drugs work by suppressing the body’s natural immune response, thus blocking inflammation
and reducing pain. While these effects may provide welcomed short term relief, they do not treat the underlying cause of the inflammation, and long term use can lead to some troubling side effects. By blocking the body’s inflammatory response, these drugs can inhibit blood flow to the area of injury, thus cutting off the necessary nutrients that aid in healing. In other words, they can actually interfere with the body’s natural healing process, and in the long term, weaken the tissues. This is why many doctors will often limit cortisone injections to no more than 3 times per year. Additionally, by suppressing the body’s immune system, these types of treatments can open the body up to infections. Patients who receive long term steroid therapy often experience increased susceptibility to a number of inflammatory infections. These could include many fungal and viral infections that can range from annoying to life-threatening.
How Can Acupuncture Help?
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Acupuncture has long been a safe and effective therapy for treating inflammatory conditions, including many acute and chronic diseases, like IBD, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, asthma, and many more. Acupuncture can reduce inflammation in the body by affecting the body’s cytokines, which are proteins secreted by the immune system that influence the way cells interact. Certain cytokines promote an inflammatory response, and acupuncture has been shown to reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines and increase antiinflammatory cytokines. Acupuncture also helps stimulate the release of natural pain killers of the body, or endorphins, to further reduce pain levels. From a Chinese Medicine perspective, inflammation and pain occur when blood and qi, or life energy, gets obstructed and the body is unable to heal. Acupuncture and electro-acupuncture can help to free up the flow of blood and energy, thus allowing the body to heal while reducing pain and inflammation.