CALIFORNIA, USA — People have used acupuncture to treat physical and emotional pain for centuries and the research is behind it.
ABC10 Health Expert Dr. Payal Kohli said the treatment gets you back into balance by stimulating key points across the body that help the nerves, blood flow, and inflammation.
Kohli doesn't recommend acupuncture as a first line of therapy, but something to seek if other treatments don't work. It's something she says parents should talk to their child's pediatrician about.
"When it comes to kids with acupuncture, we have to be careful because kids are often nervous about needles. Acupuncture, historically, has really used needles in order to stimulate, those acupuncture pressure points across the body, but what they're realizing and the science is showing to be as effective, is using alternative ways to stimulate for kids. So, there are acupuncture pressure points in the ear that they can use to stimulate the ear. There is a suction that they can use to just stimulate blood flow and you know to trigger those acupuncture pressure points, and then there's also some places that are used in kind of a low level nonpainful electrical current to really stimulate those acupuncture pressure points," Kohli said.
She said needles can be tricky when it comes to children because you have to worry about what repeated needle punctures can do to their skin. She said for that reason it might be good to explore the alternatives.
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