I have an experience with accupuncture...
I think the big difference between Eastern and Western medicine is that Western medicine is about treating the disease. Eastern medicine is about treating the person.
I'd been having heartburn every single day for months... tried stuff like prilosec and nexium, and finally ended up on aciphex, and it helped, but not enough. The pain actually landed me in the ER a couple of times, and they would give me some really strong medicine and some liquid lidocaine to swallow, and that would fix it, until the next time I bent over or laid down. I had all the x-rays and they couldn't find a physical cause. It was diagnosed as stress, which makes sense, as anyone who knows me knows that my schedule is absolutely insane... The problem was causing pain right behind my sternum, and chest pain is really scary under any circumstance, because even though you KNOW what it is because you've had six doctors diagnose the same thing, its always in the back of your mind that they might be wrong, and why isn't the medication working, and you get scared and upset, which, because the problem is stress induced, makes everything much worse. Its a vicious cycle... you have pain because you can't relax, and you can't relax because the pain is frightening, and you can't eat ANYTHING you like or anything with any flavor (like anything sweet, fried, containing alcohol, spicy, containing citrus or anything else acidic, anything rich and basically anything that tastes good), so you get stressed out over food as well.
I was at a graduation party for a good friend of mine. A friend of his father's, who is an eastern medicine doctor, was there. In front of this gentleman, I turned down a piece of cake, saying that just looking at it would give me heartburn. He grabbed my hand and said "come with me. I can fix it." I looked at my friend, because I didnt' know this guy, and my friend said "go. let him try it." I figured that I'd be no worse off if it didn't work, so I let him.
He went out to the car and got his bag with his needles (all new and sterile, of course) and took me into the back room and, after getting my medical history, stuck the needles in spots on my face, hands and feet. The needles didn't hurt, just stung a little as they went in, and then I couldn't really feel them, but my whole body kind of felt weird... almost meditative, I guess. I think I might have actually fallen asleep. I felt really...well, not exactly weak, but my body felt very heavy. It wasn't that I couldn't move, it was that I was so relaxed I just didn't want to.
After a while (don't remember how long) he took the needles out and said "there. all better. go eat cake." I was really nervous about eating the cake, but it was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and strawberry filling, and my friend was waving it in my face, so I ate it. And I felt fine. My friend said he'd never seen someone get so excited over a couple of bites of chocolate cake.
I now only get the heartburn about once every other week, and it isn't very bad at all. Before, it was keeping me up all night, and I had no energy because I wasn't getting any sleep. Now, although I still have it once in a while, its never bad enough to keep me awake. I still take the aciphex, because when I stopped taking it, the problem occurred a little more often, but nothing like it was originally. I try to relax a little more often. And now I can eat anything I want... Salsa, anyone?
