I like to call any health issue that wasn’t the result of an injury or illness a Functional health issue. As an example, let’s look at headaches. Headaches can certainly be the result of an injury; or they can come from an illness like a cold, or the flu. In these cases the headache is caused by some outside force, an injury or an illness. And these headaches would be treated the same way, by choosing Acupuncture points that open the blockages that are causing the headache.
But a headache can also come from stress, tension, or from a situation like a migraine. These are problems of the function of the body. These types of headache are coming from an imbalance in the internal environment of the body.
Functional health problems take many forms: allergies, asthma, chronic headaches, migraines, digestive problems, heartburn, irritable bowel, and women’s health issues are some of the more common issues that acupuncture can address.
Just like with an injury, these types of issues also come from blockages and imbalances in the flow of energy in the body. In the case of an illness or injury these blockages come from an outside force. But here we are talking about blockages and imbalances that we have inherited or that we have developed in response to our environment.
In Acupuncture theory we describe the meridians and the flow of Qi in relation to particular organs in the body. We understand these organs as being functions of Energy rather than just the physical organ itself. When the flow of energy to a particular organ has been blocked for some time, it creates an imbalance that affects that organ and its neighbors of the energy they need to function well. Also, we are all born with imbalances and many of these can cause functional health issues.
With Acupuncture we treat all of these kinds of problems with a combination of opening up blocked energy and balancing energy by moving it from meridians and organs where it is excessively strong to ones that are depleted. This not only helps to relieve the pain and the symptoms of the imbalance, but also can help to fix the problem in the first place!