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Katrina Tulloch tries acupuncture at The Synergy Center's CNY Community Acupuncture. Kari Gardner provided the treatment.

(Michelle Gabel | mgabel@syracuse.com)

I've always told people I don't like needles. I told doctors who gave me shots. I told my friends when they suggested a tattoo design. I told the Red Cross volunteer when I tried to give blood, and promptly fainted.

Would I look like this? Spoiler: I didn't.

And I told Kari Gardner, a community acupuncturist at CNY Community Acupuncture in Manlius. But unlike getting inked or injected, acupuncture brought the promise of pain relief. And man, I had some really stiff shoulders that day.

Plus, CNYCA has an event coming up which sounds like an interesting way to beat holiday stress. This Sunday, CNYCA will host discounted community acupuncture sessions at The Synergy Center in Manlius to raise funds for a local family (details below).

It didn't feel right to recommend something without checking it out myself. So I tried acupuncture. It was my first time, I was nervous and had a lot of questions.

Q&A with Kari Gardner, community acupuncturist

Acupuncture is supposed to be relaxing, right? The idea of being poked sounds like the opposite of relaxing.

There are different styles of needling. The style I use is with the thinnest needles almost possible, and insertion depth of only about a millimeter. They're teeny-tiny. We're using surgically-sterilized, one-time-use disposable needles. I tap it quick and it's in.

Katrina Tulloch tries acupuncture at The Synergy Center's CNY Community Acupuncture. Kari Gardner provided the treatment.

[The needles] are not hollow so they're not taking anything out of you or putting anything into you. In most places of your body, it's not even going through the dermal layer.

(Gardner shows me a needle.)

You can't even see it. It's like a hair.

It's really, really thin. They go into the "sharps box" when they're done and "sharps fairy" comes and takes them away.

So the idea is, I shouldn't feel pain?

There are lots of things you feel in acupuncture, but pain isn't typically one of them. You might feel a slight pinch when the needle goes in. Some of them you feel, some of them you don't feel at all and you don't even know I put one in.

Needles in two points on my head.

The most common side effect, and I don't even like to call it a side effect, is bleeding. It's just a tiny drop, and we see it as therapeutic. We have to say it's a side effect but really, it's not.

Bruising happens every once in a great while and I usually catch it pretty quick. I put arnica on it right away and it's gone in a couple days.

Have there ever been any freak accidents with the needles?

Not with me. We have to say things in the paperwork like "organ puncture," but it's happened like twice in the history of acupuncture in the United States. With most U.S. born and trained acupuncturists, it's pretty much an impossibility.

What if I get hiccups? Or sneeze when you're putting in the needles?

That's fine. You don't have to be a statue. Once you get the points in, you can move a little bit. If you have to scratch your nose, that's fine.

(She's right. The only issue was when I carelessly waved goodbye to Michelle Gabel, the photographer for this story. It didn't hurt, but the needles in my arms waggled around and felt bizarre.)

How exactly does acupuncture help people relax, or stop feeling pain?

What we found is really, no matter what we're treating, we are causing chemicals to shift in the brain. We're causing endorphins to regulate, which is what causes you to enter a deep state of relaxation during the treatment. We know opioids are released in the brain, which are natural painkillers.

Needles trail up my legs during acupuncture at The Synergy Center's CNY Community Acupuncture. Kari Gardner provided the treatment.

Acupuncture is a very difficult thing to study. A scientific study is randomized, controlled and double-blind. How do you have an acupuncturist who doesn't know they're doing acupuncture and a patient who doesn't know if they're receiving acupuncture or not?

It's a system of medicine thousands of years old so we've got clinical evidence from recorded history. Our modern medical tests can't really identify how acupuncture does what it does, but we can measure a reaction.

Some people come in who are so negative. They'll say, "There's nothing you can do to touch my back pain, but maybe you can help my carpal tunnel." And then we take care of the back pain before the carpal tunnel.

For most people, it takes multiple treatments. In Asia, sometimes you'll come in every day for 10 days and then take a break. We don't know why some people respond so phenomenally while it takes more time for others.

Kari Gardner's acupuncture doll shows the points and channels on the human body to treat different maladies.

Where will the needles go?

In this model of care, the majority of needles are used on arms, legs and sometimes the head.

In Chinese medicine, the organ systems have channels, the channels have points, the channels go over the entirety of the body. It's using those points in different combinations to achieve the desired effect. We're speaking of organs' uses in a completely different paradigm.

If we're treating back pain, we don't need to treat locally. We can use the channel points on the legs or arms.

We don't have access to the entire body by working in recliners, but we don't need to. We can still have great results using the channel relationships.

I feel like people don't immediately come to acupuncture when they have stress. They seem like they get a massage first. Why?

I think there's a lot of misconceptions as far as what acupuncture treats. Some people say it just treats pain or just treats sleep. Really, we treat everything.

I also think people really want the attentiveness of a massage. It makes sense to people. They think, "If my muscles are all tied up in knots, I'm going to have someone work them out," versus saying "I'm going to have a person put some needles in me and my muscles are going to relax."

Why community acupuncture? Why are other people in the room with me?

In Asia, that's actually how things happen. It actually is a community setting. Everybody gets acupuncture together. You're talking. Here, we try to keep the relaxation aspect. (The room is very dark and patients sit in big, reclined arm chairs. People don't talk. Music and bird sounds fill the silence.)

Results

Gardner used 20 needles in total: 10 in my legs, six in my arms, two on the top of my head and two on either side of my neck, where the muscles were tight.

One insertion on my leg did hurt, but Gardner adjusted it until I couldn't feel it anymore.

I reclined in a black leather armchair for about 45 minutes in a dark room with two other women I didn't know. I felt more or less the same when I left The Synergy Center, so I figured it didn't work, or that I'd need more treatments to get results.

My neck stiffness was gone the next morning. Totally gone.

"Acupuncture on a Mission"

When:

Sunday, Nov. 24 from 1-3 p.m.

Where:

The Synergy Center at 4500 Pewter Lane, Buildings 8 and 9, Manlius.

How much:

Donations of $10 are suggested and appreciated. All donations will go directly to the

Synborski Family Adoption Fund

. Typical CNYCA sessions cost $15-$35 per treatment.

Have you ever tried acupuncture? Was it effective? Share your story in the comments.