Releasing the beauty within  Acupuncture therapy can help people become more beautiful. It does this by eliminating the imbalances and blockages that prevent a person's inner beauty from becom­ing clearly visible and reaching others. People strive toward beauty due to innate urges built into our human nature. Cosmetology involves more than the use of cosmetics; it refers to the whole art of enhancing physical appearance, including beautifying the skin and hair. Evenly distributed muscle mass, and a pleasingly propor­tional weight-to-height ratio are important. However, the appear­ance of the face and skin is cosmetology's primary concern, because the skin most clearly reveals one's health, age and life­style. Now we have a new medical field of acupuncture cosmetology. To date, few Canadians know about it but they should.

           Although acupuncture's origins go back beyond 7,000 years, to remote antiquity, the art of acupuncture cosmetology is a new field of medicine. When did the benefits of acupuncture for cosmetology first became apparent? In 1970 a Chinese doctor in the U.S. discovered that acupuncture can dispel wrinkles. Soon many movie and TV stars became regular customers. Having long served to improve health, well being and life expectancy, acupunc­ture thus now also contributes significantly to the enhancement of appearance.

Beauty that is more than skin deep  Acupuncture cosmetology is developing rapidly as a branch of Chinese medicine. It emphasizes the unity of beauty and health. Its objective is to improve one's appearance. However this therapy's results positively prove how fundamentally beauty derives from good health. To improve a patient's appearance, Chinese doctors want to treat basic condi­tions. Chinese doctors seek also to delay the patient's aging process and fundamentally strengthen his or her overall state of well being. Appearance improvements follow naturally. How? Acupuncture helps to sustain increased blood circulation, which can greatly improve skin color and restore smooth, beautiful and youthful skin. Acupuncture cosmetology treats the human body as a functional unit whose vital integration the doctor can help improve. Properly administered, acupuncture stimulates harmoni­ous rhythms of human physical integration. It would take a book or a long essay adequately to explain that last sentence. I'll just say here that when we strengthen the flow of a person's life force or qi within the body, this helps give the skin a smooth, youthful appearance. The arms, legs and joints also benefit.

           Chinese acupuncturists think that Western plastic surgery or surgical cosmetology is so biased toward outer beauty that it virtually ignores inner health. Although surgery promotes skin-deep beauty, side effects of the surgeon's knife may go much deeper. Drastic surgical interventions often produce unwanted swelling, infection, bleeding and scarring. Sometimes people have lost control over facial expressions after cosmetic surgery; partial paralysis can result from damage to the facial nerves. In contrast, acupuncture does not have these side effects. Indeed, it can help those who have suffered serious side effects from Western cosmetological treatment.

           A few weeks ago a lady aged 59 came to my clinic seeking help. I'll call her Jane. Ten months previously, Jane had undergone laser treatment to remove facial wrinkles. After the laser treatment, edema quickly began to appear on her face. A few days later, the swelling disappeared, but it left red spotted marks and bumps on her face. She then went through the agony of seeking help from one Western doctor after another. Nothing they tried worked.

           I thoroughly examined Jane and applied some traditional Chinese diagnostic tests. These revealed toxins in her body that Jane's recuperative systems were seeking to expel. This condition produced two irregular symptoms we commonly encounter in Chinese medicine that in a short-hand and not too literal way we call heat and dampness. I supplemented acupuncture treatment with antipyretic (heat reduction) methods, and both oral and externally applied herbal medicines of a cold nature to treat Jane's acute feverish condition. This traditional Chinese medical treatment brought quick success. The spotted marks that had plagued Jane for ten months fully disappeared within ten days. Her natural beauty was restored.

Acupuncture stress release can restore yin - yang balance  Yin and Yang are the complementary forces that produce life and change throughout the universe. Yin is more dark, quiet, cold, low, inner, solid and female. Yang is more light, loud, warm, high, outer, encompassing and male. Each requires the other to exist and have a full dimensionality. That is, there can be no hot for example unless there is also cold, no light without darkness, no male unless there is also female. Yin - yang is an inextric‑ able pair through which life and change occur. Good health consists of having these forces in balance within the body, and also between the body and the outside elements. When the weather suddenly changes, many people suddenly get sick and remain sick until their bodies can restore the disrupted yin - yang balance.

           According to traditional Chinese medical philosophy, the human body consists of one complex organic whole that functions as a microcosm of the whole universe. About two thousand years ago, Dr. Li Shi Zhen wrote a book titled "Ben cao gang mu [a treatise on herbal medicine]." Dr. Li maintained that if you would have a beautiful face and skin you must improve your primary health, and especially achieve a sustained yin - yang balance, avoid stress, maintain regular waking and sleeping habits, and eat very little salt. Try to be happy, he recommended. An untroubled and relaxed mind is your best cosmetic medicine.

           Changes in our skin reflect reactions caused by the circulation of vital energy  or qi, and the state of the blood within our internal organs. Chinese traditional medicine strongly emphasizes preven­tive health through relaxation, diet and lifestyle. Take salt in moder­ation and try to avoid smoking tobacco, partly because both tend to produce prematurely ageing skin and excessive wrinkles. (If you need help to quit smoking, acupuncture can relieve the cravings while you kick the habit.) We think cheerfulness reduces stress and helps prevent wrinkle formation. An old Chinese saying claims: "Smile and you'll look ten years younger; frown and your hair will turn grey."

           The main causes of premature aging and decrepitude include: depressions, mental imbalances and mood swings, stress, nutri­tional deficiencies, physical unfitness and excessive hormone fluctuations. In freeing up qi flow blockages throughout the body, acupuncture re-integrates and re-adjusts the immune and nervous systems. It thus relieves stress, returns balance to the organ systems, and helps stabilize the mood swings we all experience. These effects in turn significantly improve physical beauty. Throughout our planet, there really is a beauty that begins deep inside, within your very being, and if not blocked radiates outward to captivate others.

           Recently a successful television broadcaster I'll call Jill came to my clinic seeking help. Her job stress over many years had etched premature wrinkles on Jill's face. To combat them, I began general acupuncture to restore and strengthen her nervous sys­tem. My treatment produced in Jill's body a deep, sustained relaxation response. At the same time I performed specific acu­puncture treatment on her facial acupressure points to increase local blood circulation, thus increasing the elasticity of her skin. After only two courses of treatment (one course is 10 individual treatments), Jill's wrinkles had significantly subsided or disap­peared. This treatment and the consequent psychological relax­ation it produced made Jill radiant with regained youthfulness, virtually a new and different person. In such treatments one may expect the improvement to remain effective for a long time after the treatment ends.

Unblocking that inner glow  The internal organs, the five sense organs, the skin, skeletal system, muscles, endocrine system, etc., must all function in harmonious concert with one another if an individual is to achieve optimal health. If blockages occur in the channels through which vital energy or qi must circulate, then abnormalities will begin to surface and show up on the skin. Based on the type of abnormality -- skin, hair, teeth, etc. -- it is possible for a Chinese doctor to determine which channels are blocked. On this basis we decide which acupuncture points to stimulate to achieve the acupuncture cosmetology objectives of beauty and health.

           An ancient Chinese medical book called " Zhenjiu jia yi jing" [Fundamentals of Acupuncture] says that when the qi that nor­mally flows through the shou shao yin channel" becomes blocked, the blood stagnates, the hair loses its color, and the face darkens. When qi becomes blocked in the zu shao yin channel, the body loses some ability to nourish the bones, the muscles become debilitated and lose tone, the teeth become weakened and their color darkens, and the hair becomes brittle. When qi becomes blocked in the zu tai yin channel, the skin becomes dry, flaky and wrinkled, and the fingernails, toenails and hair all become brittle. From these examples we can see how the Chinese traditional medical doctor diagnoses problems and sets out a therapeutic strategy for treating a wide variety of appearance-debilitating conditions.

           Western medical professionals have acknowledged that acu­puncture can enhance the muscles' elasticity, and can increase blood circulation and metabolic rates. This aids the skin to remove accumulated toxins and waste products, and to achieve better tone. Increasing the elasticity of the muscles will also help to stretch out and eliminate the wrinkles, but it is also vitally necess­ary to increase the skin's elasticity. In California the president of an Acupuncture Medical College has claimed that acupuncture can strengthen the muscles and regenerate blood by speeding up the removal of dead blood cells. This produces extraordinary results. Acupuncture can induce in the skin a healthy glow, produce smooth skin filled with elasticity, and thus help eliminate and prevent the formation if wrinkles and "worry lines." We cannot all be "movie-star" beautiful, but we can all be all that we can be. We can reach our beauty potential. Letting your inner beauty shine through and escape out to reach and touch others can have a dramatic effect on them -- and on your own whole life.

Achieving dramatic results  Typically a patient will come in for treatment two or three times a week. A "course" of treatment is ten visits. We normally treat patients for several courses. After each course we typically pause treatment long enough to observe the full results before deciding to resume treatment or declare victory. Acupuncture treatment takes time, but the cumulative results can be quite amazing. According to recent United States statistics, among 775 patients treated with acupuncture cosmetology, 86 per cent (n=668) showed "dramatic improvement" in skin tone, color and texture. Acupuncture cannot change a middle aged woman into a teenage girl, but it might make her look ten to fifteen years younger, and make her face virtually wrinkle free. Acupuncture cosmetology is not surgery, but it can have more effective results than cosmetic surgery. It is an essentially painless, safe, scarless method of cosmetology, one virtually immune to accidents and infections. By correcting the underlying health condition, it does much more than enhance beauty. In the process it does bring to the surface a beauty that is more than skin deep.

Yuqiu Guo, a Chinese M.D., did advanced (Ph.D.) study of West­ern medicine at Japan's Osaka University, and rose to the rank of Chief Doctor at China's famous Harbin Medical University Hospital. She now runs an Ottawa clinic, the Chinese Medicine and Acu­puncture Centre, which includes a comprehensive herbal phar­macy. Her general and family practice specializes in acupuncture, massage, and herbal medicine. She also teaches qigong  (Chinese medical meditation). Her clinic is at 883 Somerset Street West, Ottawa, Ontario. phone: (613) 233‑1098. Fax: (613) 723‑8734.