FAQ
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions people make to South Reno Acupuncture
HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE WORK?
Acupuncture adjusts the energy, or qi, that flows through the meridians of your body. These meridians are pathways which connect to the inner organs. Acupuncture rectifies patterns of energy imbalance—what Westerners refer to as disease or pain.
HOW DO I KNOW IT WORKS?
Your body tells you that acupuncture works. You feel relaxed and “rooted” after a treatment–that’s how an energetically balanced human is supposed to feel. And if we’re dealing with pain, you’ll almost always feel a diminution of pain within minutes of the needles being inserted. As acupuncture can release endorphins—natural painkillers, stress reducers, and mood enhancers—the treatment can bring a true sense of well-being. Practiced for perhaps as far back as 2500 BCE with an estimated 7.5 million patients in the U.S. alone still using it today, acupuncture’s track record is solid.
HOW DOES SOUTH RENO ACUPUNCTURE CONTROL OR ELIMINATE PAIN?
Acupuncture is highly effective in pain management. All pain is due to stagnation of qi and blood. Just like a traffic bottleneck, there is aggravation and pain where there is blocked flow. South Reno Acupuncture works to identify imbalances in the organs—imbalances that lead to pain. A balanced organ system has enough energy to course, or to clear, stagnation and pain. Acupuncture treatment re-balances the root problem so pain will not recur and works on chronic and acute pain very quickly. At South Reno Acupuncture, we use instant pain points, some of which are Traditional Chinese acupuncture points, and some of which are Tung-family Taiwanese points (a treasured family secret, handed down through many generations) to stop pain within minutes.
HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE INCREASE IMMUNITY?
Acupuncture functions to increase immunity by restoring your energy to a state of harmony or balance. An energetically balanced body has enough wei qi flowing on the surface of the body to keep the exterior of the body “closed” to pathogens that get in through the skin. If only one organ is out of balance (only one is rarely the case in the real world), it starts a domino effect, upsetting the balance between its linked, husband/wife, yin/yang paired organ. This affects the balance of the next of the six paired organs, and on down the line. Acupuncture is an excellent preventive medicine; if you put the energy into maintaining balance, breakdowns rarely occur.
WILL I NEED HERBS (herbal medicine)?
You may need herbs because while acupuncture excels at balancing the energy you already have in your body and at pulling excess out of the body—the stagnation that causes pain—herbs or herbal medicine have been used in tandem with acupuncture to can tonify, or add energy, to the organ systems. At South Reno Acupuncture, Dr. Danchak always starts conservatively, first using acupuncture alone to balance your system. But for more ingrained imbalances, or for older patients without much energy to draw from, a custom herbal formula may be prescribed after 3-4 treatments.
HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE AND HERBS INCREASE FERTILITY?
Acupuncture and herbs increase fertility in both men and women by identifying organ level imbalances (usually Liver and Kidney). It will also identify meridian level stagnation and blockages that are allowing the imbalance to persist and correct them. Acupuncture and herbs are the quickest and most effective way to increase fertility. Many western in vitro procedures are preceded and followed by acupuncture treatments to increase the odds for success.
HOW DO ACUPUNCTURE AND HERBS ADDRESS ANXIETY, STRESS, FATIGUE, DEPRESSION, AND IMSOMNIA?
Acupuncture and herbs address anxiety, stress, fatigue, depression and insomnia by balancing the Heart and Liver organ systems (although there are overlaps and multiple diagnoses frequently involved). Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine make no distinction between the health of your body and the health of your emotions—your spirit, what Chinese Medicine refers to as the shen. Each of the 12 organ systems has a specific emotion attributed to it. By means of tongue and pulse diagnosis and taking an exhaustive medical history, Dr. Danchak determines which of the organ systems are excess and which are deficient. By balancing the energy in the body, he can then treat the imbalance with acupuncture and herbs and turn it around. Ingrained patterns take more time and effort to balance and keep balanced.
HOW DO ACUPUNCTURE AND HERBS HELP ME ACHIEVE PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL HARMONY OR WELLBEING?
Acupuncture and herbs help you achieve physical and emotional harmony or wellbeing by keeping balance of energy on a core, organ level. Physical and emotional harmony or wellbeing is the natural state of a healthy human. Like Dr. Danchak’s first acupuncturist told him when he was amazed at how good he felt: “That’s how you’re supposed to feel.”
HOW DO ACUPUNCTURE AND HERBS ADDRESS MENSTRUAL PROBLEMS LIKE MENSTRUAL CRAMPS, PMS, HOT FLASHES AND NIGHTSWEATS?
Acupuncture and herbs help to mitigate menstrual problems like menstrual cramps, PMS, hot flashes and nightsweats by identifying organ imbalances and putting them right by means of herbs and acupuncture. Many points can immediately and effectively eliminate menstrual cramps. Organ level balance keeps the energy in the affected (Liver) meridian from stagnating and thus causing pain. Yinyin is cool, nutritive, female energy: fuel; yang is pure fire, male energy. Everyone needs both. When women age, their essence, defined as yin (cool energy) begins to wane, leaving them feeling the relative excess of yang (male fire energy), so they experience unpleasant heat sensation. Yin energy is best replaced by herbs. A custom herbal formula can address the real-world yin replacement needs of menopausal patients.
HOW DO I TAKE MY HERBS?
South Reno Acupuncture uses only the best, granular (powder) form of herbs from Taiwan. Before being allowed into the country, the FDA tests the preparations extensively for heavy metals and other contaminants to assure the consumer of their safety, quality, and efficacy. HERBAL TEAS, PILLS, ETC.? OR CHANGE QUESTION TO “Are the herbs safe?”
WHY A CUSTOM FORMULA?
A custom herbal formula is better than an off-the-shelf formula because it can be modified for your specific imbalance. Though many practitioners use pre-made traditional formulas, South Reno Acupuncture starts with a traditional formula and then modifies it (adding and removing certain herbs or adjusting the ratio of certain herbs) based on your specific needs. Custom formulas work more quickly and effectively than off-the-shelf formulas, meaning you can take less for a shorter period of time.
DO THE NEEDLES HURT?
Some people worry that acupuncture will hurt. It doesn’t—most describe the sensation of being needled as a temporary dull ache around the insertion site (acupuncture needles are very thin); in fact, most people sleep through the treatment and leave feeling extremely relaxed and centered. Even the rare, exceedingly needle-phobic patient tolerates acupuncture needles well, and those very few who can’t tolerate them can be helped substantially by tui na (point-specific Chinese massage) and by taking a custom herbal formula.
IF I AM A PERSON WITH 20 YEARS OF ACUTE CHRONIC BACK PAIN, WHAT SHOULD I EXPECT?
That depends on your overall health. If you’ve been self-medicating and not exercising self-care, expect to need to see Dr. Danchak more frequently than someone who’s been taking better care of him/herself.
HOW MANY TREATMENTS WILL I NEED?
That depends on how imbalanced your energy is and how much energy you have for Dr. Danchak to work with. The good news is that acupuncture and herbal medicine are cumulative—that is, the more time you spend with the needles in (getting your energy adjusted), the more effective the treatments become. But there is no shortcut to balance: once you start getting regular treatments (and taking your herbal formula, if necessary), you’ll find your symptoms begin to abate. You’ll discover you become ill less frequently and less severely—one of the many up-sides to preventative medicine—and you’ll have more energy.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “REGULAR TREATMENTS”?
After the first few treatments, your response to treatment and your own preferences will determine your frequency. Some people do well with being treated once a month, others once a week or once every two weeks, and still others once a week until an acute symptom is gone, then return to once a month.
DO I HAVE TO BELIEVE IN IT?
Not at all. Acupuncture is not a religion or a cult (there’s no purple Kool-Aid in this clinic, but we do push green tea). You don’t have to believe in acupuncture for it to work. You do, however, have to believe in it enough (or be open-minded enough) to make your first appointment and start getting treatments.
WHAT DOES TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE TREAT?
The World Health Organization recognizes acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine’s ability to treat over 43 common disorders. These include joint pain, anxiety, stress, insomnia, addictions (drugs, smoking, alcohol), allergies, asthma, frequent colds, gynecological problems, male and female infertility, gastrointestinal disorders, circulatory disorders, and more.
TELL ME ABOUT THE SEVEN DRAGON’S TREATMENT, A.K.A. A POSESSION TREATMEN?
Possession is a blanket term for any skewed or blocked qi (or “energy”). So, the ancients used the Possession/Seven Dragons Treatment to address disorders ranging from the physical (a “demon” in a joint—which we would now call, somewhat more prosaically, tendonitis) to the emotional (depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, the after-effects of abuse)
So acupuncture treats more than just physical pain. Traditional Chinese Medicine makes no distinction between emotional and physical disorders—energy is energy. The Seven Dragons Treatment is effective in cases of unresolved emotional issues surrounding abuse or abandonment and in cases of physical trauma—sports injuries, sequela of stroke—in which standard acupuncture and herbal treatments aren’t giving fast enough results.
The Seven Dragons refer to the seven points needled—key points that work together to calm the spirit, clear phlegm obstructing the heart, transform damp, clear heat, and dissipate wind-damp. A sedating needle technique works on all the points to remove stagnant energy from the system.
WHEN SHOULD I GET TREATED?
Sooner is always better than later. The more entrenched patterns of energy imbalance become, the harder they are to treat. Western medicine has realized the same thing—pain left untreated too long becomes hard wired and more difficult to alleviate.
HOW DOES DIET IMPACT PAIN?
Traditional Chinese Medicine, which includes acupuncture and herbs, is a holistic medicine. It treats the whole person, making no distinction between the patient’s body, mind, and spirit. In the Chinese paradigm, all three are interconnected. It’s about keeping your energy balanced. For example, an unhealthy diet causes damp accumulation in your body, meaning your body will be preoccupied with trying to deal with that pathogen of excess damp and will have less energy available to it to deal with your back pain. That damp pathogen will also cause sluggish/muddled thinking, a feeling that you’ve lost your edge, and that can lead to anxiety or depression. It’s all connected, and acupuncture always treats the whole patient, addressing the root cause as well as all branch symptoms.
Single Herb Pharmacy
South Reno Acupuncture is single herb pharmacy. Each herb is decocted (slow simmered) in the traditional manner to add energy to it, then poured into its own bottle (pre-mixed, off-the-shelf formulas have their constituent herbs decocted together and mixed together cookie cutter style—fine if you happen to be the rare textbook case). South Reno Acupuncture tailor-made herbs are available when you need them, and if they need modification at some point, there is little to no waste; they can almost always be modified. Running a single herb pharmacy is more labor intensive, but results in a better product.
Philosophy
Remarkable things happen when you take the time to listen to your patients; things that don’t happen if your doctor is rushed for time. In the interest of providing fast and effective relief from pain, internal disorders (disease), and the harmful effects of emotional stress and anxiety, every patient receives a full hour so that Dr. Danchak gains a complete understanding of you and your symptoms—the better to tailor your treatment and herbal formula. You will be heard, and your concerns noted, dealt with, and remembered with the attention, compassion, and empathy that every patient deserves.
Dr. Danchak’s deep interest in both the clinical and research aspects of Chinese medicine means that when not actually working with patients, he is researching herbs and poring over patient files to come up with more effective point combinations for their acupuncture treatment, recognizing each person in his office as an individual and working in close collaboration with you to facilitate your body’s ability to regain its harmony and balance, ensuring optimum health with the simple and elegant practice of acupuncture.
Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese Acupuncture & Custom Herbal Formulas in Reno, Nevada since 2002.
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