It also helps patients to enhance control over their body responses. Hypnosis is a normal state of aroused, attentive and highly focused concentration - comparable to being so absorbed in a movie or novel that one losesawareness of his or her surroundings. This program specializes in treating chronic pain as well as acute musculoskeletal and sports injuries by offering medical acupuncture techniques to help stimulate the healing process and decrease pain and inflammation. Medical acupuncture is performed by doctors trained and licensed in Western medicine who also have had thorough training in acupuncture as a specialty practice. At Stanford Hospital and Clinics, medical acupuncture expertise is integrated with traditional medical care to help treat pain, limit medication and complement physical therapy and exercise programs.
Acupuncture encourages the body to promote natural healing and improve functioning.
Medical acupuncture is performed by inserting very thin, stainless steel needles and applying heat or electrical stimulation at precise acupuncture points. The physician uses disposable needles or needles that have been carefully sterilized, applying the same technique used to sterilize surgical instruments. Needling the acupuncture points stimulates the nervous system to release chemicals in the muscles, spinal cord and brain. These responses can either change the experience of pain, or trigger the release of other chemicals and hormones which influence the body's own internal regulating system. The improved energy and biochemical balance produced by acupuncture can result in stimulating the body's natural healing abilities, and in promoting physical and emotional well-being.