Alternative Medicine Resources

The problem with drug or alcohol addiction is while an addict is busy trying to get out of this habit the body is having extremely strong urges to satisfy its craving for another fix or drink.  Once the addict hurdles this obstacle the path to recovery becomes even clearer.  Western medical science may have provided support (if it can be termed as that) for those addicted to smoking in the form of nicotine patches.  However, with drug and alcohol addiction, it has not provided anything to help combat these two habits at all.  Acupuncture for drug and alcohol abuse is not really known to the wide public as a viable treatment for these two addictions because no major rich sponsors promote this natural and very beneficial treatment.  However, acupuncture in the treatment of chemical addiction is slowly gaining popularity especially among support groups and rehab centers that see it as an effective and cost-effective way of putting people back into the right way of living.

Rehab clinics can be unpleasant places to go to as they are filled with noisy and sordid people.  When acupuncture was introduced, the atmosphere slowly turned into one of relative peace and calmness.  New patients are carefully informed of this treatment to calm their nervousness and anxiety.  The patient is usually treated with five needles inserted on the ear and some needles also inserted in their arms, feet or hands.  The needles are left in the body for around 45 minutes after which are removed by the acupuncturist.

The effect of acupuncture on an addict is that it removes the desire and craving for the addictive substance.  Some of these patients wistfully describe the feeling as coming home from a hard day of work and taking off the shoes to relax.  The beneficial effect lasts a whole day and therefore the treatment needs to be done daily.  So-called dry alcoholics may determine for themselves the right time to go for treatment.  Besides the treatment, the patient needs to stay out of situations that can cause much stress since stress can be a trigger for the cravings to appear once more.

Because of acupuncture’s efficacy, rehab and detox clinics use  Bellevue acupuncture as the first stage of addiction therapy.  The first stage of treatment typically last ten days and at the end of ten days a urine sample of the patient is checked to find out if the patient has been drug or alcohol free for those ten days.  If the patient passed the urine sample test, he/she then goes to the next phase of the program which is called a twelve step program. Acupuncture is still given during this phase; however, a relapse of the patient will bring the patient back to the ten day treatment phase.

Programs that incorporate acupuncture treatment have much greater rates of success than that of conventional acupuncture-less programs.

Bellevue Acupuncture has been highly recommended by many physicians and patients as a very good vehicle for achieving well-being in the mental, emotional, physical and even spiritual sense.  It is one of the oldest medical treatments in the world dating back more than 2500 years ago.  Acupuncture utilizes reed-thin needles inserted and left in place for 30-40 minutes in certain parts of the skin to take away many types of pain and disorders.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture assists in balancing and normalizing the body systems to make them function efficiently.  Acupuncture restores balance and enables healthy unhindered energy to flow in the body.  Western science does not fully understand how acupuncture works but acupuncture has shown its effectiveness in relieving many kinds of pain and distress including the alleviation of nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy is a very toxic treatment for cancer and it involves the use of chemicals to kill cancer cells; however, its toxicity kills not just the cancer cells but the healthy cells as well. Its track record of treating cancer is very poor and yet it is the main “therapy” used by almost all hospitals in the treatment of advanced cancer.  Its horrible side effects can be effectively remedied by acupuncture and all cancer patients given acupuncture treatment after chemotherapy can benefit greatly from acupuncture, especially the lessening of nausea and episodes of vomiting, according to the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

For the treatment of nausea, the acupuncture point P6 located in the wrist is usually treated with a needle.  Besides needles, this point can be activated through electro-acupuncture, electro-stimulation without the use of a needle or acupressure.  In one of the issues of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a large percentage of patients undergoing high-dose chemotherapy experienced less bouts of nausea and vomiting through electro-acupuncture in combo with anti-nausea drugs.  .  This proves that alternative modes of treatment such as acupuncture can be very beneficial for patients coping with the side effects of chemotherapy.  A number of oncologists then are recommending acupuncture nowadays to their patients before and after chemotherapy.

In a research experiment done in December 2000, more than a hundred women with breast cancer who underwent chemotherapy before having bone marrow transplants took anti-nausea drugs.  Besides taking -nausea drugs, some were also treated with electro-acupuncture once a day for five days, some were treated with minimal insertion of acupuncture without electrical stimulation once a day for five days and some were not given acupuncture at all.  The women treated with electro-acupuncture had substantially fewer episodes of nausea and vomiting A few percentage of those given acupuncture without electrical stimulation also had less bouts of nausea and vomiting while those not given acupuncture treatment at all experienced nausea and vomiting.  This experiment showed the efficacy of acupuncture in treating nausea and vomiting induced by chemotherapy.