Acupuncture with Functional Medicine
Ready to Blend Ancient Wisdom with Modern Medicine?
Whether you're navigating gut healing, hormone balance, or just want to feel more grounded in your body, acupuncture can enhance your progress and help you stay aligned with your goals.
Integrating East and West: The Best of Both Worlds
Functional medicine provides the lab work, the data, and the personalized lifestyle plans. Acupuncture brings the energetic regulation, nervous system reset, and holistic balance that help those plans stick—and work more effectively.
Together, they create a model of care that is proactive, personalized, and deeply healing.
How Acupuncture Supports Functional Medicine Health Goals
In the world of holistic healing, there’s a beautiful synergy between acupuncture and functional medicine. Both systems share a foundational belief: the body is interconnected, symptoms are meaningful, and true health requires addressing root causes—not just surface-level fixes.
If you're already exploring functional medicine or working with me or another practitioner who’s helping you rebalance your gut, hormones, or immune system, you might wonder where acupuncture fits in. It’s an incredibly powerful ally—especially when it comes to three key pillars of health: stress, inflammation, and diet.
1. Stress: Regulating the Nervous System for Healing
Chronic stress is one of the most overlooked drivers of disease. It disrupts digestion, depletes the immune system, worsens inflammation, and throws hormones into chaos. In functional medicine, stress management is a cornerstone of every healing plan.
Acupuncture shines here.
By calming the sympathetic nervous system (the “fight or flight” state) and activating the parasympathetic (the “rest and digest” mode), acupuncture helps bring the body into a healing state. Many patients report feeling deeply relaxed—even euphoric—after a session. Over time, regular treatments can retrain the nervous system to respond to life with greater resilience and calm.
Bonus: We can also use acupuncture points that specifically target symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, irritability, and fatigue—all common consequences of long-term stress.
2. Inflammation: Calming the Fire at the Root of Many Conditions
In functional medicine, inflammation is often at the root of issues like autoimmune disease, joint pain, skin conditions, cardiovascular disease, and brain fog. Acupuncture doesn’t just manage symptoms—it can modulate the inflammatory response itself.
Research has shown that acupuncture can:
Reduce pro-inflammatory cytokines (chemical messengers that fuel inflammation),
Improve circulation and tissue oxygenation,
Support detoxification by enhancing lymphatic flow and organ function,
And help balance immune activity, which is especially important in autoimmune conditions.
By using targeted acupuncture points, we can help calm the body’s “inflammatory fire” so that healing can happen more efficiently—and with less pain or reactivity.
3. Diet & Digestion: Supporting Nutrient Absorption and Gut Health
You can eat the most nutrient-dense diet in the world—but if your body isn’t digesting and absorbing those nutrients well, the benefits are limited. That’s where acupuncture comes in.
In Chinese medicine, digestion is closely tied to the health of the Spleen and Stomach meridians, which govern the transformation and transportation of food and nutrients. When these systems are out of balance, it can lead to:
Bloating
Gas
Constipation or diarrhea
Food sensitivities
Fatigue after eating
Acupuncture helps regulate digestive function, calm gut inflammation, and enhance nutrient assimilation. This is a powerful adjunct to any functional medicine plan focused on healing the gut lining, balancing the microbiome, or addressing food intolerances.
We can even tailor treatments to support detox protocols or boost metabolism as your body adjusts to new dietary changes.