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Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with acupuncture
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Questions tagged with 'acupuncture' at Ask MetaFilter.
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Needles In My Face?
Any experience with facial/cosmetic acupuncture? I received acupuncture for an injury recently, and found it incredibly beneficial. Now I'm hearing that acupuncture can be used to diminish fine lines and improve the general tone of the skin.
Has anyone had experience with this? Do you have a particular place you'd recommend (in the NYC area, in particular?). Feel free to MeMail if there's a specific practitioner you'd recommend.
Thanks much!
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False hope would suck.
ControversialFilter: is acupuncture a load of bunk? So I posted this question a while back.
Brief update: 2 physiotherapists later, neither thinks I damaged my ligaments. Meniscus injury is possible, although they said it's unlikely if I haven't damaged my ligaments.
I had stupidly reinjured my knee playing with my boyfriend (forgot I couldn't bear weight on that leg while I tried kicking him) but have been good with ice, ibuprofen, compression, etc. However, even though the joint seemed to have settled down for a bit, after I stopped the ice and ibuprofen, it swelled again. I still have the pain in the joint line and the inner side of the knee.
GP took an X-ray, results will be out this week, although given what I've observed I don't think I fractured/cracked any bone. Physio suggested it might be a kneecap tracking problem, but taping the kneecap made it feel worse. I am in Canada, which MRIs are subsidized by the government (ergo my insurance doesn't cover it), but the wait is like half a year.
Anyway, sayeth the family, "5000 years of tradition can't be wrong" so I got taken to a Chinese doc. He felt the knee and found some tender points I didn't know existed, and pronounced I had injured my ligaments (medial and lateral, I think) and the meniscus. He verified this by using suction to induce a series of redness/bruises around my kneecap, where the redness was the normal bits and deep bruises were the injuries where there was internal bleeding. And he said he could fix this.
Okay. I was raised in the West and I admit I am biased against alternative treatments. But if it works, great. And I do admit that after his acupuncturing, the knee actually felt a little better (although it's sore again now). But I thought cartilage and ligaments generally...don't heal. I'm not sure how any sort of alternative medicine can make things that don't heal, well, heal.
Also, he gave me some medicated patches to use on said knee and some pills to swallow. I am slightly concerned if the pills will affect my birth control pills.
Does alternative medicine really win out over Western medicine and all its fancy imaging technologies, drugs, and surgeries, even some of the time? Is this a false hope, or might there be something to it? I am aware that the majority of MeFites probably are born, bred and raised on Western medicine (hey, so am I, I'm just as skeptical), but there're probably a good chunk who've tried alternative therapies as well. Tell me your stories!
(And whatever the case, I'll probably still push for that MRI. But it's a long wait...)
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Am I being rational?
Alternative medicines for a young kid - am I making too much of it? I'm trying to figure it if my position is irrational or I am overreacting to the situation. The situation:
- My lovely wife is very health conscious and mostly dismissive of western medicine. She also has recently had some serious health issues which has made her even more proactive about health.
- I am pretty much the opposite. I value health but almost never go to the doctor and eat what I want, irrespective of it's omega content. I very much respect science and double-blind studies and FDA regulatory processes. I have never been to an acupuncture clinic but would have no big qualms about going for an ailment.
- Kiddo (3 years old) is healthy.
The dispute is that my wife takes kiddo to the acupuncture clinic regularly, with the needles and whatnot, for just normal "health tuneups". There are also visits when kiddo has cold for removing congestion, and at one point giving some "tincture" from the clinic to the kiddo which she knew I would object to. Kiddo complains one night when I'm flying solo that she cant go to bed because she "hasn't had her herbs" yet...
I'm concerned about a couple things -
- I dont want kiddo to have a psychological attachment where she thinks its normal to constantly eat herbs and go to the doctor twice a month as normal healthy living. It seems like a path towards hypochondria to me.
- I dont trust the non-FDA tinctures, especially when used just for "maintenance" and on children.
- I dont like that when I discuss it with the 'missus the conversation gets lost in hand-waving about how 5000 years of Chinese cant be wrong and my basic request to keep preventative health doctor/alt-med office visits to a minimum seems to be ignored.
Am I overreacting here? Is there some good reason why we should raise our kid to think its normal to go to the alternative medicine guy (or any doctor) every couple weeks? (I could buy that, but its completely foreign to me.) Is this all so harmless (tinctures included) that I should just skip the fight?
Thanks for your time and opinion.
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TMJ alternative treatment and practitioner recommendations for New York City
Please share advice for non-dental treatments for TMJ. I've been dealing with this for about a decade, and had a custom made night guard, that I wore religiously, for all this time. Maybe it's slowing down the rate at at which the TMJ is getting worse, but it's still getting worse and I hate it. Osteopathy? Acupuncture? I've heard of both as possible alternative treatments - and my insurance would help pay for them. Has anyone had positive experiences with them? Or can recommend a practitioner (who takes health insurance) in Manhattan or Brooklyn? Or has other suggestions for treatment to explore?
Thank you!
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How can I find an acupuncturist with an MD or DO in my area?
How can I find an acupuncturist with an MD or DO in my area (South of Boston)? My insurance company cover acupuncture, but only if its an MD or DO (Doctor of Osteopathy). My google has failed me and short of calling every acupuncturist in the area I don't know how to find one. I found a DO directory, but it clearly didn't list all of them and didn't offer a search by function (such as acupuncture, but rather search by sports medicine, etc).
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