Surgery is high stakes. (The common expression being, “There’s no such thing as minor surgery.”) Drugs are highly toxic, sometime addictive and rife with undesirable side effects. Drugs (and often surgery) also fail to address the underlying problem, instead suppressing or temporarily alleviating symptoms that are likely to return because the core issue hasn’t been adequately dealt with.

In a lot of cases, these two options are all patients ever know. Unless someone close to you has experienced the benefits of Traditional Chinese Medicine, you may never get another perspective on your situation.

Our goal at Eastern Medical Center is to raise awareness about acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine as a “second opinion” before undergoing costly and traumatic surgery or starting an oftentimes lifelong regimen of taking toxic drugs. There is a totally natural option in many cases that saves money and health.

This could be a chronic illness or a bad knee or a shoulder problem. Whatever the diagnosis, people need to know that their body is intelligent and understands how to heal itself. There’s likely just some sort of block preventing energy and blood flow from reaching the affected area.

Healing happens naturally … and we’re here to give the body the help it needs to heal without radical medical intervention. Because when the body is brought back into balance—when the root of the problem is reached—all those symptoms go away.

Sometimes surgery is necessary. Even then, in the case of surgical procedures to correct degenerated, bulging or ruptured discs of the neck and lower back, acupuncture helps the management of post-operative pain.

In terms of postoperative pain control, acupuncture treatment can:

• Completely relieve pain, or provide as much relief as possible
• Reduce pain levels
• Improve the ability to deal with pain
• Control the local tissue swelling
• Shorten the resolution of hematoma
• Assist the emotions
• Regulate the appetite
• Strengthen energy
• Increase participation in usual functions
• Enhance the quality of life
• Minimize the side effects of the anesthesia
• Lower the dosage of painkillers after the operation or reduce reliance on painkillers
• Minimize the use of other medications associated with the pain and their attendant side effects
• Stimulate the rapid recovery of functional activities after the operation, etc.
• Accelerate recovery!

So, the next time you hear someone say they need surgery or have been prescribed drugs by their doctor, mention they might want a “second opinion” from the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which, by the way, has been in practice 4,000+ more years than Allopathic medicine.

For more information, please see Dr. Sun Pei-Lin’s book, The Management of Post-Operative Pain With Acupuncture.