How Does Acupuncture Works — The Analogy of Turning Brown Grass to Green
Our bodies are constantly trying to heal every health problem that develops. Many issues are handled without outside help. Take the example of common cold. Even if you do not treat, you will recover for most cases. Just sleep in and drink warm water etc. But there are many issues, our body has tried, but is not very effective or takes a long time. But just because a problem does not spontaneously heal on its own does not mean it is beyond our body’s resources. We rarely get 100 percent of our body’s full potential for self-repair. When the body’s efforts to heal a problem fall short, it is kind of like a lawn turning brown because it is not getting enough water. If you could add some minutes to the automatic sprinkler system, this can give the grass the resources it needs to turn from brown back to green. The same thing goes for stimulating the body’s self-healing resources. A good course of acupuncture treatments should always be able to boost the body’s resources at least a bit – like adding more minutes to the sprinklers. What remains to be seen is how much good this boost will do. That is what we will seek to find out by doing an initial series of treatments – around 5-6 for the majority of chronic cases and up to 8-10 for the most serious, long standing ones.
When a lawn turns brown and you add more minutes to the sprinklers the grass will not usually turn green overnight. So please do not feel disappointed if you do not have a dramatic improvement with the first one or two treatments, although that can sometimes happen. With chronic health disorders, it is much more common to see a subtle and gradual improvement as the body repairs itself just like a lawn gradually turning green.
Finally, sometimes when a lawn turns brown, certain areas may have gone past the point of no return and now, no matter how much water you put on those areas, they will not spring back. This is what can happen in those health issues when a problem is of the type or gets to the point that the body’s resources cannot heal it. It can be difficult to tell just how much — if any — improvement will occur by boosting the body’s resources. This, again, is where the initial series of treatments is employed to help us gauge how the patient’s problem is responding. In some stubborn cases, we may reduce the symptoms by 70-80 percent, but the last bit of the problem remains because it has gotten to the point of being beyond the body’s self-healing resources. Take an example of stroke rehabilitation, if you start treatment within 3 days, the success rate is in the 90%, but if you start acupuncture treatments 6 months later, the success rate is less than 3%, and total recovery is difficult.
The limit of acupuncture is the limit of the body’s resources. Acupuncture can’t make the body heal something it never had the ability to heal in the first place. It also explains why acupuncture can be effective in a remarkably wide range of problems including many problems for which conventional medicine is ineffective. Acupuncture boosts your body’s resources, helps your body fight whatever the battle that is going on.
