Green Eggs & Acupuncture
The other night I was reading Green eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss to my youngest son. I found the theme all too familiar. Most of us have read the story. It's about a boy named Sam who is trying to get a man to eat green eggs. The man refuses to eat them, even though he has never tried them before. In the end, yes, he ends up liking them, only because took the taste test, but only after Sam pestered him incessantly.
After practicing Acupuncture for more than 23 years, I am still humbled by the misconceptions of Acupuncture and its place in Western society. Sure, there aren't commercials on TV showing couples holding hands on a beach after an Acupuncture treatment, or rainbows shining after someone took an herbal prescription. So it is only fitting that Acupuncture remains in the societal background, waiting for something or someone to bring it to the mainstream.
Weigh the alternatives first.
Oriental medicine (Medicinal Herbs, Acupuncture) is primary care for over 1/5 of the world's population because of:
Safety
Cost - Inexpensive and covered under many insurance plans
Relatively few side effects
Painless- thanks to modern manufacturing, needles are hair thin & gentle.
Inherently Natural- Plant based medicine
It works. Otherwise it would have faded like other fads.
People who try Acupuncture treatment usually choose it as a last resort. The typical situation is when a patient first goes to a physician and the physician tries a number of different drugs, then there is a surgical intervention and still no positive results. So the physician finally says to the patient (after all other invasive procedures have been tried) "Why not try Acupuncture?".
Acupuncture is usually more effective (you'll respond faster) if your body is in a more 'organic' state. This means before taking a pharmaceutical that suppress your symptoms. Let Acupuncture target the root cause of your disease instead of masking symptoms with a drug.
I can write books on why Oriental Medicine is amazing. But no matter how amazing something is, experience will be the best judge. Will you like it? Yes! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
And after trying it, I am sure you too will say:
I do like Acupuncture!
Thank you! Thank you! Dave-I-am!