I’m an M.D and was extremely skeptical about Chinese Medicine. After three failed IVF’s, I was willing to try another approach to getting pregnant. Bina is a wonderful educator and practitioner of acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. After taking Chinese herbs for three months I began to feel better than I had in years. I was preparing for another round of IVF when I found out I was pregnant. I would highly, highly recommend Bina as an alternative to IVF. — Sonya G., MD

Acupuncture

Berkeley AcupunctureAcupuncture is one of the oldest healing modalities having been continually used for nearly 4,000 years. It is still used by ¼ o the world population as a primary healthcare modality. When I am asked if it “works,” what always comes to my mind is why would people subject themselves to being stuck by needles generation after generation if it didn’t. It is an extremely effective way to treat a wide variety of conditions without side effects.

The most asked question from people who are new to acupuncture is “Does it hurt?” The needles I use are hair-thin and are not designed to cut the skin. They are inserted gently and shallowly and the experience is nothing like having an injection. Most people don’t even know I’ve inserted the needles and all needles are disposed of after each use. Did you know that you can fit 45 acupuncture needles inside one hypodermic needle, the kind your doctor would use to draw blood? It’s not going to hurt. I promise.

In the last few decades, there has been a rapid growth in the awareness and use of Chinese Medicine in Western countries. In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration estimated that Americans made up to 12 million visits per year to acupuncture practitioners and spent upwards of half a billion dollars on acupuncture treatments. This rapid rise in popularity is due in part to patients who have tried acupuncture and gotten successful results then tell their friends. And in part due to recent clinical research supporting the efficacy of acupuncture for a variety of conditions.

Acupuncture was a primary health care modality for thousands of years, so techniques were developed to treat a very wide variety of illnesses. The World Health Organization put out a statement on what it felt acupuncture was most effective for. These include:

  • Low back pain
  • Neck pain
  • Sciatica
  • Tennis elbow
  • Knee pain
  • Periarthritis of the shoulder
  • Sprains
  • Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)
  • Headache
  • Dental pain
  • Temporomandibular (TMJ) dysfunction
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Labor induction
  • Correction of malposition of fetus (breech presentation)
  • Morning sickness
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Postoperative pain
  • Stroke
  • Essential hypertension
  • Primary hypotension
  • Renal colic
  • Leucopenia
  • Adverse reactions to radiation or chemotherapy
  • Allergic rhinitis, including hay fever
  • Biliary colic
  • Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke)
  • Acute bacillary dysentery
  • Primary dysmenorrhea
  • Acute epigastralgia
  • Peptic ulcer
  • Acute and chronic gastritis

If you go to pubmed.gov and search acupuncture, you will find more than 16,000 journal articles on acupuncture alone. Given its long history, you can imagine that there are many different styles of acupuncture. At Berkeley Acupuncture Center, Bina primarily uses Japanese-style acupuncture which is characterized by the use of very fine needles, shallow insertion and minimal stimulation. A very gentle technique!!!