Alternative Medicine Heals Wounds of War for Veterans

The wages of war can take a toll on military veterans - both physically and emotionally. 

Some local vets are turning to alternative medicine to ease the pain.

In this solemn peace, the sacrifice of service is slowing healing for veterans like Susan Walker.

"This helps. This does more in a one hour clinic per week than all the pills that they can stuff down you."

Marie Arnberg, a licensed acupuncturist, says, "It's energy medicine. Or that's how I like to put it. Every practitioner may have their own spin on it but it's energy medicine that doesn't distinguish between mind and body."

Acupuncture has long been used to help the body heal by tapping into a person's energy. 

Recently licensed acupuncturists Tom Jamieson, Marie Arnberg and Ashleigh Hart started offering the treatment in Bangor to veterans and their families, for free. 

Jamieson says, "When veterans go through either physical trauma or emotional trauma, they manipulate their chi in order to do what they need to do and it gets stuck. What we do is help the body relax and that chi to flow again."

That's made a difference for Gene Nardi, who struggles with a sore knee. 

But it's the mental relief that's surprised him. 

"For me, it's more of a relaxation type. I feel that I'm not quite as uptight."

Veteran Edward Leonard says, "I don't get so upset, in a way, because I'm more relaxed. Because when you dwell on the pain, it's hard to be relaxed."

When it comes to helping these veterans, that feeling of ease flows both ways.

Hart says, "I know they have given so much, so much of their life and after serving. My life is just a little better to know that I gave someone a few minutes of tranquility and a little better health."

The free acupuncture treatments are every Thursday evening at Grace United Methodist Church in Bangor.

They're also available to active duty military and their immediate family. 

Comment

This piece of news published in the Wabi Tv5’s web page on 12th  November 2012 is about how the acupuncture and other alternative therapies can improve the health and the psychological conditions of a person.

It’s true that military veterans have seen a lot of unpleasant situations and they support much more pressure and stress than other people, so they need something to try to abide certain terms. Its work is like that, they had decided how their lives would be, and now they can see the consequences. Maybe they are sorry or not, but something has changed… Before people couldn’t help these military veterans, but now thanks to the amount of challenges there are options to these people don’t feel so bad anymore.

Acupuncture is a new method of relax, whose effectiveness has already been proven by many people who corroborate it. It helps them to get the perfect situation of complicity between mind and body, suppressing the worries, bad thoughts and problems a person could have.

It plays with the people’s energy and the situations of relaxation that the sessions get it, manipulating all to get the goal, to avoid the decay or the lapse into the costs physically and emotionally again.

This type of treatments work better than any drug or spill, because it is directed to the brain, creating, also, a placebo effect, helping to the body is relaxed. It is, how the texts says, “the mental relief “what prevents the tension causing flow vitality and quiet.

                                                         As we can see in this video.

Personally, I think that that’s good not only because they are military and they have helped the country (because this is their job)  but rather if there is some product that it can solve a problem for someone, it is always welcome, regardless of the person’s job. But, also it is true that this kind of people can need more cares due to traumas, as firefighters or police officers and other security.

 I know and I can say first-person, as a military’s daughter that it is very very hard see as your father goes to countries in war to help people who are there. But I know too that it his responsibility, a huge responsibility, but work after all. So if that can help him or us in one of the worst moment of our lives I think that is very useful.

Maybe it is a little unfair, because I am aware that much more people suffered also, due to other causes, but it must be considerate as a investment in the army, which has been careless many times.