Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Acupuncture for Bunions


A bunion is a red swollen area of tissue located over a joint, which can be painful and can get worse over time. The joint that is mainly affected by bunions is on the big toe and may be a precursor to suffering from gout. According to western medicine bunions mainly occur from wearing tight fitting shoes that put to much pressure against the joints of the toe, which irritates the tissue and causes it to protrude outward.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Acupuncture Treatment For Gout



 Gout is a form of arthritis and appears as a red inflamed bump over a joint, which causes very sharp pain. It is considered to be one of the most painful diseases and it usually wakes people up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. Pain so bad that artist James Gillray in the year 1799 painted how painful it can be by depicting a little demon biting a foot!

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

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.