Acupuncture For Tinnitus
The ancient wisdom of the East asserts it has its own recipe for relief of the world-wide condition. It offers, as a supplement to modem management of tinnitus, a treatment whose credentials are found in the traditional medicine of China which dates back thousands of years.
To the less informed westerner, acupuncture is all to do with surgical operations being conducted without pain and with a few pricks of a needle supposedly replacing the usual anaesthetics. Such stories of Chinese practices in hospitals become exaggerated traveling around the world and tend to take on an aura of near-miracle. The actual picture is less clear-cut, with Chinese medical people ready to admit that acupuncture is best seen as something of value alongside 'modern' medicine and not as a replacement for it.
Its value in tinnitus treatment becomes acceptable if one agrees a fairly basic (though still scientifically unproven) line of reasoning. Putting needles into the correct parts of the body certainly reduces or abolishes pain and, in the case of operations, prevents it. Interestingly, very loud created sounds are experienced as pain by the unfortunate hearer. Could not, then, acupuncture prove to be an antidote for tinnitus levels well below the pain-inducing threshold?
It is unlikely that anyone, with or without tinnitus, has been experimentally subjected to sound-made pain just to see if the use of needles would reduce or cancel it. Yet there is evidence both in China and elsewhere that tinnitus, at different levels of intensity, can partly yield.
It is sobering to note that practitioners list numerous conditions from allergies to vertigo as promising candidates for their work. Tinnitus sits alphabetically between Thyroid and Tonsillitis and, to the sceptic, prompts the question of whether it is there with little more than hope to sustain it and included just to prop up the catholicity of the claims. As in many other forms of treatment, do not let mere doubt turn you off. There are many genuine-sounding testimonials to tinnitus relief, though it is freely admitted that it does not work for everyone.
In its defence, it must be said that the closer one looks at acupuncture, its origins and long development, the stronger the inclination is to accept it as a path worth exploring. Acupuncture goes back some 3,000 years, roughly when a civilization geographically closer to the West cut holes in the head to let the evil spirits of tinnitus escape. On the face of it, therefore, the East was, at least at that stage of human malady and treatment, better equipped to treat sufferers. It has remained part of traditional medicine which includes the use of herbs, exercise, massage and diet.
It claims to have a unique understanding of the human body. Fine needles are used to stimulate invisible lines of energy running beneat the surface of the skin. A little less certain is the claim that the puncturing of the skin changes the energy balance of the body, thus helping to restore health. Sometimes herbs are burned – known as moxibustion – as a supplement. There is a theory that Stone Age people used sharp bone to scrape the skin or lance boils and to stimulate the body. By accident they found that such points seemed to lie in definite pathways, and the sensation from the needle passed along these lines and had a therapeutic effect on the body. Later in history, knowledge of basic anatomy helped to form the current theories of channels of energy.
But as tinnitus is really a symptom and not a disease in itself, can it find a place in such treatment? As something else is causing it, would it not be necessary first to find that 'something else' and then see if acupuncture could be of use? Such doubts can probably be dispelled by the treatment's 'whole person' approach, Western doctors look for a specific cause or agent of a disease and control or destroy it with drugs or surgery. Chinese medicine also looks at the disease but takes into account the habits and physical and emotional characteristics of the patient and attempts to measure and chart what acupuncturists call patterns of disharmony that have arisen.
Good health, it is concluded, it a state of total harmony involving the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the person. In many cases the symptoms of a complaint, however severe, are not important. If that is true, tinnitus (in its status as a symptom) also loses importance and could eventually disappear or recede as merely a bit player in the total drama being played inside the body of the sufferer.
The healthy internal balance of the body and the flow of vital energy can be upset by many things, from stress, worry, fear and grief to dependence on alcohol, accidents, falls and hereditary factors. Interestingly this is reflected in the many conditions or events that tinnitus patients often claim as causes or triggers of the head noises, though this is not enough in itself to prove the remedial value of acupuncture for them.
Anyone taking their tinnitus to a practitioner is likely to be treated seriously. To reveal a pattern of disharmony, questions and observations will seek to build up a picture of lifestyle, emotional state, diet, approach to work, etc. Treatment can be combined with western drug therapy, where, for instance, it has been prescribed for tinnitus-related Meniere's disease, or for conditions not associated with head sounds. Treatment for tinnitus is usually once a week or fortnight.
The strongest clinical evidence in favour of this special branch of medicine shows that it can definitely relieve muscle tension in the neck and head. Such tension can cause or aggravate tinnitus. Does this also support the central theory of acupuncture, i.e. that the energy of the body (known as Qi, pronounced 'chee') keeps the blood circulating, warms the body and fights disease? Qi, it is believed, flows through a network extending from the foot to the top of the head, with twelve channels each connected to an internal organ. If this is so, and there has been scant evidence to the contrary, it is unlikely that the ear and its connections to the brain have been somehow omitted from the detailed scheme.
And if they are included, is it not possible that some forms of tinnitus are symptoms of this life-supporting flow of energy? Does this ancient form of medicine hold the key to the timeless and baffling mystery of tinnitus? To find out more, you can check out Acupuncture For Tinnitus.
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