Help Your Horse with Acupuncture

We are living in an exciting time for the world of equine medicine. With advances in the last few decades, horse owners have at their disposal a huge variety of both diagnostic and therapeutic options for the health care of their horses. Internal medicine, surgery, reproductive management, lameness diagnostics, dental care, neurologic care, and more can all be offered to clients either in-hospital or on-farm. Along with these advancing traditional equine health care services, we are seeing an increasing popularity of alternative therapies for many conditions. One of these fantastic therapeutic options is acupuncture.

We do, however, need to get away from the idea that other types of treatment are alternative. Many times there are several ways to treat a specific condition your horse may have. Laminitis cases may benefit from both anti-inflammatory medication and therapeutic shoeing. A chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) respiratory case may benefit from both bronchodilator medication and housing changes to control the environment. I think everyone would agree that all of these treatments may be beneficial, but we would not consider one treatment above as an alternative to the paired one. They are complimentary to each other. That is the integrated medicine approach we use with equine acupuncture

Given the length of time acupuncture has been used to treat humans and animals, we definitely can’t call it a new treatment method. Historical records show that acupuncture was first used over 2000 years ago in ancient China. This origin of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is the basis of the naming system we still use in acupuncture points to this day.

It is important to note that there are two differing concepts on how acupuncture is used and how it works. The TCM concept is that energy (Qi - pronounced chee) flows through the body in a natural state of balance. Disruptions in this state of Qi occur when there are health or pain-related conditions in the body. According to TCM, placement of acupuncture needles allows the restoration of normal energy flow and a return to normal health.

Scientific or medical acupuncture is an adaptation of Chinese medicine that does not rely on the metaphors of external factors such as “wind and energy” affecting the body. Rather, medical acupuncture uses current knowledge of equine anatomy, physiology, and pathology to identify and treat specific conditions affecting your horse. Leading this approach to veterinary acupuncture is Dr. Narda Robinson, Founder and CEO of Curacore®. Along with several other types of therapy instruction, Medical Acupuncture for Veterinarians courses are available for your vet, and offer tremendous in-depth training for equine acupuncture. It should go without saying, but beware of non-veterinarian acupuncture services wanting to treat your