Opioid Crisis Has An Answer No One Is Talking About

The opioid crisis has been exposed. Everyone knows someone who has been addicted to pain medication and it often ends badly. Either through anger, aggression, family feuds or doctor hopping, patients usually need more and more medication just to take the edge off or help them sleep.

Acupuncture has the potential to reduce or in many cases completely eliminate the need for opioids and non-opioid medications while also helping to treat opioid addiction.” Researchers have found acupuncture can replace opioids through stimulating the production of the human body’s endogenous opioids, or the body’s own physiology and chemistry to mimic the benefits of synthetic pharmaceutical drugs without the risk of side effects. In the majority of the cases acupuncture out performs opioid drugs in pain management.

In addition acupuncture has other benefits, including stress reduction and emotional pain relief.  From a  psychological perspective, acupuncture increase the levels of a variety of  chemicals in the central nervous system –  epinephrine, endorphin, enkephalin, serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. These chemicals help relieve pain, increase healthy sleep and reduce anxiety and depression.

The opioid crisis starts with patient awareness, physician responsibility and referring out or seeking help from acupuncturists in three different ways.  Either they receive acupuncture to reduce pain before starting on pain relieving medications or to help a patient wean off medications and heal addiction or to prescribe both medication and acupuncture simultaneously so the need for pain medication is reduced and it's easy to stop the medication early on.

More often than not, in our private practice at Eagle Acupuncture, it's a concerned family member who brings the patient in to see us in an attempt to help them get off pain medication and stop their pain. It is rare when a doctor initiates this recommendation but we hope to educate those in the medical profession to consider working together to reduce dependency and addiction to opioids. Patients don't need to suffer and together we can help patients feel better physically and emotionally.  Thankfully, patients don't need a doctor to refer them to acupuncture. If you or someone you love has been taking pain medications longer than two weeks, it's time to consider acupuncture.