Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy that uses moxa. Moxa is also called dried mugwort. Moxibustion is called 灸 (pinyin: jiu) in Chinese. Moxibustion plays an important role in the traditional Chinese medicine system. It has the equivalent importance as acupuncture in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and other countries who use traditional Chinese medicine.
Mugwort has long been considered a kind of herb that is particularly good for women regulating their menstrual cycle and easing the transition to menopause. Mugwort is usually not used directly. It is grinded up and aged for years to evaporate the mugwort oil. In TCM, Moxa is Yang and used mainly to restore deficient Yang conditions.
As we discussed in other blogs, there are 4 types of moxibustion methods: direct moxa, indirect moxa, hanging moxa and portable moxa. You may use loose moxa, moxa rolls or smokeless moxa accompanying with moxa accessories to use moxibustion.
Moxa sticks are developed since Ming Dynasty in China. Moxibustion is a very convenient and efficient method to using moxa’s healing warmth to solve various kinds of problems. It also can be self-administered healing method which is a bit different from acupuncture. You have to find a professional acupuncturist to practice acupuncture. Moxibustion are usually used at the acupuncture points. It is using the same theory system as acupuncture. The deeper the acupuncture needles usually insert, the closer the moxa to the skin.
Studies have shown that indirect moxa application such as garlic indirect moxa could produce infrared waves that can be absorbed by body. Infrared will have physiological and biochemical effects on body. It would help with pain relief, improve circulation, skin purification, etc.. (Norek). Studies have also shown that moxa smoke has a positive regulating effect on human autonomic function. (Cui, Yingxue) It is also observed that moxibustion could effectively help to correct fetal presentation by stimulating the acupoint BL-67. It could help a lot of women who are willing to born their babies natural. (L, Neri) As there is another experiment shown that moxibustion have significant effects on Crohn’s disease. (Bao, Chunhui).
Among all the studies, it is not hard to find that moxibustion’s healing power is meanly produced by its unique warmth. It could go through under your skin and stimulate the deeper parts of your body. In addition, because of its warmth, it will help with body circulation which is really an important part. Body circulation brings nutriments to whole body and takes away the toxins inside your body. Body circulation makes your body function smoothly every day. In addition, we recommend you to purchase good quality moxa in order to achieve safe moxibustion and benefit more from moxibustion.
In the end, we would like to conclude the purpose of our blog about moxibustion benefits. We can find more studies and experiments out there to approve the benefits of moxibustion. But our purpose of the blog is not to give you all the evidence and details about the experiments of moxibustion. We would like to encourage you to start your journey on moxibustion to keep healthy or improve your quality-of-life.