Acupuncture is a safe, painless and effective therapy that modifies the flow of energy, known as Qi or vital force in the body to promote a healthy balance.
Like most of us, I started my journey as a patient of traditional Western medicine. After my son was born, we dealt with frequent ear infections that wouldn’t go away despite the use of antibiotics.
I started studying other types of therapies and trying to figure out why his body couldn’t overcome the infections with traditional medicine. Eventually, that search brought me to acupuncture.
My first impulse was to find a way to help my son grow up healthy. At the same time, I observed many people around me, who were seemingly healthy, were going through cancer diagnoses and treatments. These folks were healthy and were conscious about what they ate. Why were they going through this?
These experiences ignited a passion in me for helping others. I felt a strong urgency to find something that could help them.
Three things to know
There are three key things about acupuncture that had a profound impact in my personal life and in my practice: Nutrition, consistency and quality of life.
Nutrition
The first, and most impressive one, was the nutritional aspect. I was struck not only by seeing how nutrition played a key role in helping people become healthier, but in understanding how nutrition plays such a basic role in our health.
I discovered that part of my son’s problem was related to nutrition. A human’s digestive system matures between ages 7 and 8. You have from the time they are born until then to help children strengthen their digestive system and build resilience against disease.
Consistency
Acupuncture, like any other healing modality, is therapy. Therapy requires frequency and sequence to work well. You can reach many life goals by applying consistency. The same applies to your health.
With acupuncture, sometimes people see benefits after the very first treatment. It depends on whether we’re dealing with an acute or a chronic issue.
A chronic issue has had more time to settle into your body and cause problems. Sometimes we begin by addressing your habits and lifestyle. This doesn’t mean we’re ignoring the problem. We’re coming up with a strategy for you to tackle the problem with efficacy.
Lifestyle
An acupuncture consultation begins with a thorough history of your lifestyle, your issues and any areas of concern. Perhaps an acute problem that showed up recently can be addressed in a couple of sessions.
If you have a knee problem and your job requires lifting boxes, constantly exposing you to re-injury, we might talk about new ways to move to avoid aggravating the problem.
Chronic issues can take longer to address, and different treatment modalities can be used to give you a head start in getting to the root cause of the problem.
An acupuncture physician patiently works with you to help you put the puzzle together and achieve optimum health.
Adriana Posada, AP, is a licensed and nationally board-certified acupuncture physician who strongly believes in the body’s natural healing powers and its connections with the mind, spirit and nature. She also holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, and came to Eastern medicine out of her own experiences and curiosity for how and why things work. Posada lives in Ponte Vedra and works in St. Augustine and Jacksonville Beach. Visit https://www.holmedical.com/ to learn more.
