Does Acupuncture Work: Symptom Relief vs. Correction

Symptom Relief vs. Correction:

In Chinese Medicine, the goal is to give the patient relief from their symptoms, as well as to address the underlying cause of the symptoms. Symptoms are the last piece of the puzzle to appear. In general, the conditions that created the symptoms were in place years before the symptoms actually appeared. These conditions often are multi-factorial and often go unnoticed by the patient.

Take for example, a leaky roof. Every time it rains, water starts to drip in to the house, making the floor and carpets wet. After some time, the roof and the carpets begin to mold and the wood and ceiling begin to rot. Symptom relief would involve putting a bucket under the leak, catching the water, so that the floor stays dry. However, over time, the ceiling continues to rot and mold and sometimes, if the outside stressors (in this case, the rain storm) are strong (eg. Heavy rainstorm), the bucket isn’t big enough to hold all the water and overflows on to the carpet and floor. Over time, the temporary, symptom relief approach becomes inadequate, and doesn’t actually solve the problem (the mold and rotting), because we didn’t actually address the cause.

Now, let’s say the home owner is still unwilling to spend the time and money to fix the cause of the problem, so instead, they tape a piece of plastic over the leak in the roof. This seems to be effective for a while, however, the roof continues to rot and mold, and eventually the plastic breaks. You get the point. Sure, you could continue to cover the leak with plastic over and over, or use the bucket approach each time it rains, however, eventually, the mold and rotting will cause further problems. People in the house start to develop allergies to the mold that is growing, and after awhile, the rotting causes structural damage to the house, and the roof begins to buckle. You now have more and more symptoms developing from the same root cause. It no longer is safe to leave it as it is. The amount of time and money that is now needed to replace the roof is significantly more than it would have been to fix the original small leak.

Symptom Relief = the bucket and the taped plastic

Correction = fixing the roof

An additional step to making sure that symptoms do not return is maintenance. In the case of the leaky roof, maintenance would entail inspecting the house and treating minor damage BEFORE it becomes a bigger problem.

With Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, treatment that includes all three phases is the most effective and durable approach. The duration of each phase depends on a few factors, including how long the person’s had the symptoms/condition, age, lifestyle, diet, overall health, consistency of treatment, etc.