Acupuncture For Bell's Palsy

Acupuncture for Bell's Palsy has a high success rate especially when treatment is sought as soon as possible. Bell's Palsy is a sudden inflammation of the 7th cranial nerve that is typically caused by sleeping with your face near an open window. While asleep the body's defense mechanism isn't as strong and exposure to cold air, which typically causes a cold invades the body and causes more damage then it usually would.

The most common symptoms of bell's palsy are as follows:

1. Paralysis, weakness or numbness of one or both sides of the face
2. Difficulty speaking, drooling
3. Dry eyes or constant tearing of the affected eye
4. Loss of taste
5. Pain around the ear

When treating bell's palsy there are three factors that have to be addressed:

1. Expelling the pathogenic factor (cold virus)
2. Stimulating qi and blood flow to effected parts of the face
3. Boosting the immune system to reinforce the first two factors

In acupuncture it is good to treat not only the affected area directly, but as well as distal points on the hands and legs that are internally connected to the face. The back of the neck and shoulders also hold some great points to help expel pathogenic factors and increase blood flow to the face.

There could be up to 2 dozen acupuncture points on the face that can be used to treat bells palsy, which are also good to stimulate with acupressure. Stimulating the points for up to a count of 100 a few times a day is a good way to bring blood to the face. Here are a hand full of some of the best points to stimulate on the face and their other uses besides for bell's palsy. Check out the above picture to see where they're located.

1. GallBladder 14 - Frontal Headaches
2. Stomach 2 - Any Eye Problems
3. Stomach 4 - Facial Pain, Trouble Eating
4. Governing Vessel 26 - Brings energy to face, good for driving late at night.
5. Triple Burner 23 - Eye swelling and pain

Usually for bell's palsy it takes 2 treatments a week for about 5 weeks to bring the face back to a normal state depending on how soon treatment was sought. The more time that passes, the more difficult it is to really revive the facial muscles to go back to normal, so doing self acupressure is a great way to help heal the face.

Thank you for visiting Acuthink, I  hope this has been an informative article and please leave any comments or questions.