Acupuncture has taken 3,000 years to become a trend in the beauty world and beyond. So, asks beauty writer Ingeborg van Lotringen, is now the right time to embrace the therapeutic needle?
Most of us would probably agree that the concept of ‘wellness’, though exceptionally popular right now, is rather ill-defined. Comprising countless services and products ranging from wonderful to woefully woo-woo, it’s often hard to sort the medically supported wheat from the esoteric chaff – and easy to come away feeling no better, yet significantly less solvent. It puts the millennia-old practice of acupuncture in a delicate position. It’s supported by the NHS for the treatment of chronic and musculoskeletal pain and migraines, yet the NHS website nonetheless likes to point out that ‘traditional’ acupuncture (as opposed to what they call ‘medical’ acupuncture) is ‘not always based on rigorous scientific evidence’ and ‘largely based on belief’ in certain principles.
This ‘belief’ pertains to the concept of qi – or vital energy – said to flow throughout the body along meridians that link our organs and entire system together. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), where acupuncture originated, believes that diseases of the body and mind start with blockages that prevent this energy from flowing freely, causing systemic inflammation – which, Western medicine concurs, is at the root of a huge amount of disease. TCM practitioners aim to unblock energy and blood stagnation by inserting needles at specific points around the body and face, restoring – in their tradition – balance, healing nutrients and oxygen flow. In this way, acupuncture treats the symptoms of disease as well as its causes, making it very much a form of preventative therapy. The NHS will only concede that the needles help release natural chemicals, such as endorphins, thereby aiding pain relief.
TIME-TESTED
Non-pain related applications such as cosmetic acupuncture – hailed by many devotees for its lifting, plumping and skin-energising effects – are backed up by scant evidence from a Western point of view. The lack of research rankles practitioners such as Joanna Ellner, an ex-beauty editor turned TCM acupuncturist. ‘There are plenty of peer-reviewed studies proving the
benefits of acupuncture, but only one into facial acupuncture for skin rejuvenation,’ she says. ‘Yet acupuncture has been quietly providing results for thousands of years. It has survived cultural revolutions, warfare and the rise of tech – if it didn’t work, it would have simply faded away like so many of the facial rejuvenation gadgets I tested as a journalist.’
It’s the tech revolution, Ellner feels, that may be one of the reasons acupuncture is finally coming into its own over here. ‘It’s about the human touch and that connection,’ she says.
