Both women and men can be affected by depression. This negative condition can be a result of various environmental, mental, and physical factors. Depression may result in mild to severe symptoms of appetite loss, sleeping problems, sense of worthlessness, concentration problems, fatigue, loss of enjoyment in usually enjoyable activities, dejection, sadness, and even suicidal ideations and actions.
People suffering from depression exhibit symptoms which from the standpoint of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), are due to an imbalance of internal energy generated by external stress.
Pharmaceutical medications and psychotherapy are two of the treatments used by Western medicine to resolve depression which it considers to be a sort of biochemical imbalance in the brain. Chinese herbal therapy and acupuncture are used by TCM practitioners as an alternative treatment for depression. These two modalities can also be used as adjunct treatments to Western conventional treatments for depression. By activating specific acupoints on the body, acupuncture normalizes the body’s vital energy or qi helping to balance and heal the central nervous system. Depression is treated by acupuncturists in Miami whom at the same time manage to provide comfort and relief to spirit of the patient leading to the patient’s overall well-being. A lot of patients who use pharmacological prescriptions are usually able to reduce, if not altogether stop, their use for such drugs while they are benefiting from the healing effects of acupuncture.
The University of Arizona did a study to see if acupuncture can be effective in treating mild to major depression in women. The women who participated in the study were suffering from mild to severe depression. The study’s conductors asserted that acupuncture is as effective or even more than drug or psychotherapy for the treatment of depression. One of the patients involved in study described her experience with acupuncture. She said that she was constantly in a state of chronic irritable gloom. When she had her first acupuncture treatment, she immediately noticed an improvement. After three and four treatments, she experienced a vast improvement of her condition.
Chinese medicine’s and acupuncture’s effectiveness in treating depression is partly due to the ability of the acupuncturist to precisely insert needles into acupoints that are associated with the symptoms of the patient and with his/her quality of personal care helps cure the problem entirely. Western medicine does not have the capacity to provide for this kind of treatment and care. However, this is not to say that western medicine should be entirely discarded. Not at all! Western medicine has a 50% to 70% rate of success in treating depression. However, this is only true when patients complete a regimen involving treatments such as psychotherapy or medications. For the other 30% to 50% of the patients, sadly they may experience minimal or zero improvement and adverse side effects, as well.
The Chinese tradition of needle insertion into specific points on the body to control the energy flow in the body to balance the endocrine system causes the normalization of specific body functions including emotional changes, sleep patterns, respiration, body temperature, and heart rate according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In Beijing, the Institute of Acupuncture and Moxibustion conducted a study analyzing the brain wave patterns of twenty patients suffering from depression. The results showed that acupuncture treatment can have a positive effect on patients suffering from depression.
The importance of acupuncture as a complementary or alternative therapy is indisputable. It helps assist people to get back their spiritual, emotional, and physical balance helping them to live healthy, happy, and pain-free lives.