Tossing and turning again?
Well, then, mayhaps you’d fancy a poke to help you get to sleep.
No, no, no… Not in the sexy English sense. I mean, while late night boot knocking might be a fantastic fix for insomnia, we’ll cover that in another article. Someday. If my overlords let me. However, the type of poking we’re gonna discuss today is a bit more literal: Acupuncture.
(Can we load mine with Botox and benzodiazapenes today please? No? That’s not a thing?)
What this practice is, essentially, is an ancient Chinese tradition that focuses on alleviating ailments by addressing these things called your meridians. Don’t know what a meridian is? I didn’t either, when I first tried this for back pain a while ago. So, I looked it up. And I learned that they’re basically energy highways in your body. According to Chinese medicine, we’ve got about twelve of ’em, and each of our organs are associated with different ones. When we’ve got mind or body issues, it’s kinda like having and accident on these meridian freeways. Things move at glacial pace. Flow of traffic’s impeded. Your chi’s too busy rubbernecking to get to its destination and back. What the needles do is come in like a medivac, ambulance, and towtruck team to clear shiz away so everyone can take their feet off the life brakes. And, fear not; it’s not like some deep stabbing pain. I’ve laid there before, all quill-ridden in a patient gown with these things sticking outta my azz and back meat. At worst, it feels like a brief tingling pinprick upon entry, then nada while you lay and wait for them to do their work.
(Often on totally different parts of your body than the piece they’re impaling.)
And what kinda success does it have?
Despite the lack of scientific evidence about “meridians” or “chi”, this is one of those self-experimentation things I highly encourage trying before knocking. Much like meditation, prayer, or yoga (or anything else that works while we dunno why), chi energy altered through other means is an utterly transformative experience. Unfortunately, we’re floating around in an age where current science (which doesn’t include all the phenomena we’ve yet to understand) reigns as god and open-mindedness to science that hasn’t been understood yet, often gets shut down. (I know – ’cause I used to be among this lot of folk.) This is a mistake – especially when it comes to our well being. It’s what turns us to pills and spending money on shiz we don’t need. Just because we can’t quantify something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or work. I learned this the hard way – after trying everything wrong for chronic pain – and then coming to rely on intrinsic practices like these. The moment you realize you’ve mitigated some somatic malady or emotional issue simply – sans doctors, scripts, or waiting rooms – it almost feels like you’ve gotten the cheat codes for life. Could it be this simple? Could I avoid dependency and side effects? Could “energy” based practices truly work for everything from sciatica to insomnia?
The answer, according to many, is yes.
In fact, while there may be no scientific proof of these chi freeways in your meat sack, there have been scientific studies done to see how well acupuncture functions for sleeplessness. The results? Firstly (for my worriers), there were no adverse reactions to acupuncture. Secondly (and what we’re all here for), it indeed proved effective in treating insomnia across different experiments. There was a Chinese study done with 3,811 patients in which it proved useful as a snooze inducer. Then there was also German research performed with forty snore deprived test subjects. Finally, there are innumerable testimonials out there as well from peeps who volunteered to be human dartboards and found sweet reprieve from evenings of restlessness as a result.
Thus, the next time insomnia’s got you wanting to stab yourself…
Maybe let someone else do it instead.
(Preferably someone who’s qualified in the art of Asian medicine.)