Acupuncture & TCM Articles

The benefits of Acupuncture as a treatment for High Blood Pressure

By: Stephen Morgan

Alongside the more standard provision of healthcare for the treatment of High Blood Pressure there are now beginning to emerge more and more complimentary options. Of these perhaps the most commonly available form of complimentary healthcare in use to day is that of Acupuncture.

If we take the provision of Healthcare for the treatment of High Blood Pressure on a worldwide basis it is quite interesting to note that only about between 1 to 30 percent of this healthcare is delivered using conventional Western forms of Treatment. The remaining 70 odd percent of the people needing treatment worldwide are treated using a mixture of traditional self-care or by healthcare based on non-western (alternative) traditions.

As we become more international in our whole approach and outlook, Healthcare Professionals in the West have as a result become much more aware of the apparent success of these methods and have as a result become much more interested in incorporating these techniques into the skill set of treatment options that are now on offer and available to patients.

Acupuncture involves stimulating specific points in the body for therapeutic purposes. Puncturing the skin with a very thin needle is the usual method, but practitioners also use heat, pressure friction, suction or the impulses of electromagnetic energy to stimulate the points.

The explanation behind all of this is that channels of energy run in regular patterns through the body and over its surface. These energy channels, called meridians, are like rivers flowing through the body irrigating and nourishing the tissues. Acupuncturists maintain that these rivers can become blocked at certain points and that the Acupuncture needles clear these obstructions. The more modern scientific explanation is that needling the acupuncture points stimulates the nervous system to release chemicals in the muscles, spinal chord, and brain.

Contrary to popular belief the needles and the process doesn’t hurt. Acupuncture needles are very thin, solid and are made from stainless steel. The point is smooth (not hollow, as with a hypodermic needle) and as a result insertion in the skin is not as painful as having injections for blood samples etc. Neither is there as much bruising as you would get from the use of conventional needles which of course makes this an excellent form of treatment for the elderly or those who for a variety of reason would find themselves liable to bruising very easily.

There has been quite extensive research carried out into the success of Acupuncture as a treatment and the results seem to bear out the use of this form of treatment. It does appear to work.