Our high health care costs today would have been unimaginable in the 1950s.  Does anyone remember the days when doctor visits actually cost $3?  That’s all my mother paid when I was in grade school.

Here is an interesting piece on the evolution of health care in our country.

https://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm

As health care costs continue to rise, the best way to avoid these high costs is to get and stay as healthy as you can by eating a healthy diet, exercise, finding ways to de-stress and, of course, get acupuncture treatment.

Does anyone remember the days when doctor visits actually cost $3?

Have you ever considered what it costs you in time and money to when you get and are unable to be as productive at your job as you would like to be?  How much time does it take out of your life when you become ill and have to keep visiting the doctor or even stays in the hospital?

Having to take regular medications, which are sometimes very expensive medicines is another high cost of health care.  Many chronic illnesses can sometimes be managed with dietary changes and adding vitamins and herbs instead of costly medicines.  This is not always the case, for sure, but sometimes it is and you will not experience the side effects of the medications.

Getting acupuncture treatments to become and stay healthy is the best investment you can make for your health.  Acupuncture is your “wellness insurance.”

One thing to look for is if the acupuncturist has the Dipl.Ac. NCCAOM (National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) certification.  The NCCAOM is a certification held by most licensed acupuncturists.  The ACAOM (American College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) is another certification to look for.   Find out many hours of training/schooling an acupuncturist has had before you make a choice.

Within Chinese medicine, there are many different types of acupuncture .  Most people are not aware of the hours of schooling that a licensed acupuncturist should have before providing acupuncture treatment.   There are other licensed health care professionals who perform acupuncture that do not have the full training and credentials that a fully-trained acupuncturist should have.  Some health care professionals performing acupuncture have as few as 25 hours of training in the use of acupuncture needles.  Acupuncture should not be performed by someone who does not read the wrist pulses and/or do a tongue diagnosis, which helps them determine where the imbalances in your body are and, thus, what acupuncture points to use in treating your health issues.  “Dry Needling” is not “Acupuncture.”

If someone is seeking acupuncture for a condition of pain that you do not know the cause of, and acupuncture is used to remove the pain and if there is a more serious, underlying disease process going on that was causing the pain, that condition could continue to get worse and you may not know it because the acupuncture removed your pain without addressing the cause.

Ask for a free consultation to meet the acupuncturist.  After all, before making this investment of time and money for your health, you should feel comfortable with who you are going to be working with on your path to health.

Did you know that acupuncture is very effective for relieving stress?

Studies show that stress can cause all kinds of physical ailments, including irritability, high blood pressure, trouble concentrating, insomnia, increase or decrease in appetite, and inflammation throughout the body, and inflammation is the root cause of many diseases.

“The American Medical Association (AMA) states 80 percent of all health problems are stress related, and even the conservative Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has stated that 85 percent of all diseases appear to have an emotional element.”

See more at Mercola.com

Let me share with you a gem of  a book I recently discovered and highly recommend reading:

Happy, Healthy…Dead by Noelle C. Nelson.    http://www.noellenelson.com/

Stress can also be brought on by dealing with pain every day.

As my teacher Professor Worsley says, “Most people can tolerate a fair amount of physical pain.  But you know what you can’t tolerate — when it gets to your mind.  When you get depressed, when you get worried, when you get anxious, when you get tense, when you can’t sleep, when you get really irritable and really edgy, you feel within yourself you don’t want to bother to carry on.  That is worse.  The mental anguish is worse than the physical pain.”

From the book Talking About Acupuncture in New York