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Can Labor Be Induced by Using Acupressure…With Your Tongue?
On a flight from Karachi, Pakistan, to the northeastern city of Lahore in 1975, this writer was experiencing a pretty painful headache. As I rubbed my forehead, a Japanese lady by whom I sat asked if my head were hurting? I told her it was, and that I seldom had headaches.
Without asking, she reached over and took my hand. Placing her thumb between my thumb and first finger where the two join, she applied moderate pressure for a few seconds. She released the pressure for a short time, then, pressed it again. She repeated the procedure three times on the one hand, then did it all again on the other hand.
When she finished the second hand, in the time frame of about 2 minutes, my headache had disappeared. She told me she had just used acupressure on a pressure point to relieve pain in my head. She explained that there were other pressure points for relief of other parts of the body. Since I did not hurt anywhere else, and since I was unable to fabricate any new ailments on short notice, the treatment was complete
Since that year, I have self-treated my headache pain successfully scores of times. Usually it is completely successful within seconds. Sometimes it only reduces the pain, but it does so significantly. It has never failed to ease the pain to some degree.
That is why I found interest in reading that acupressure could help induce labor in an overdue mother-to-be. The reading led to the understanding that women had even induced labor in them selves by pressing their tongue to the roof of their mouths.
Acupressure is a long-known art/medical science method of treatment in some Asian countries. It has not been fully exploited or tried or tested in the US. It is a discipline that is most likely going to see a lot more application in the future, but it is also one that should be practiced after discussing it with your medical or dental professional.
How Does Acupressure Work?
No one knows exactly how acupressure works. One theory is that pressure over certain nerve fibers blocks the pathways of pain in the body. Another is that stimulating certain energy points releases the body’s own natural painkillers, called endorphins. Other research has shown that energy points are areas of skin which conduct electricity much better than the surrounding skin, so stimulating them may release blocked energy.
Don Petty
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