Needles and Herbs

Acupuncture. I’d always been curious, but never tried it.

After a glowing recommendation by a family friend, my wife and I decided to go see how it worked for us.

This particular acupuncturist also treated with traditional Chinese herbal medication. And she only spoke Mandarin. Fortunately, my wife is fluent in Mandarin.

On the first visit I was asked a series of wellness questions (via my wife translating). About my sleep, food, energy, etc. She then had me lie down and put needles in my feet, chest, wrists, neck and head. So far, so good. Only a few of the needles stung. About 30 minutes later, she came and removed the needles. Next, she treated my wife.

She prescribed some herbs for me to drink in warm water, twice a day for a week. She also scheduled 5 more treatments over the next 6 days! Okay, so that surprised me. Based on the miraculous stories I’d heard from our family friend, nobody ever seemed to require more than 3 treatments. But I decided to give it a fair chance.

The herbs tasted horrible. Like drinking a mud smoothie. Twice a day. For a week.

My wife didn’t have to go back for a week. So each time I went, I’d show up, get treated with needles, and go. Since I don’t speak Mandarin, it made the visits awkward at best.

I ended up going two more times. To be honest, the table that I had to lie on was more painful than the needles. But after 3 days of needles and herbs, I was done. I definitely wasn’t noticing any positive effects, and in fact felt a little more pain than when I started. Probably from that table.

I stopped taking the herbs for the same reasons. No noticeable effects. Plus, I had no idea what was in them. Enough!

Lessons learned:

• Always make sure you can communicate clearly with whoever is treating you.
• Know what’s in the treatment if you’re taking herbs.
• Get a realistic idea of how long the treatment should last, and what results you should see.

So, for me, the jury is still out on acupuncture and herbal medicine. It seems to work for some people. But this time it just didn’t seem to do much for me.

All content written and voiced by Joe J Thomas online at: JoeActor.com