When Acupuncture Alone Isn’t Enough
TL;DR: Acupuncture is a powerful medicine, but it can only work with the resources your body has. Our other therapies make sure it has everything it needs for deep and lasting healing.
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© Copyright 2025 by Dr. David Meredith, D.Ac.
Acupuncture has a way of feeling uncanny. A few whisker-thin needles, inserted just so, and pain eases, stress lightens, or sleep deepens. To someone experiencing it, the shift can seem almost magical.
But modern research shows what’s really happening. Acupuncture activates sensory nerves, regulates the autonomic nervous system, stimulates pain-relieving pathways in the brain and spinal cord, and modulates hormones and immune activity through the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. When used orthopedically, it can even trigger a quick neuromuscular reset.
These are powerful effects, but they don’t come from outside you. No medicine is injected, and the needles aren’t magic wands that dispense healing spells. Acupuncture works by awakening and coordinating your intrinsic processes. It’s a spark that reminds your body to follow its own biological blueprint for healing.
Still, the body can only respond with the resources it has. Stress, aging, illness, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, lack of rest, and the relentless pace of modern life leaves almost everyone depleted, circulation impaired, energy production reduced, tissues starved for recovery. In those cases, acupuncture still works. Of course it does. But progress can be slower and less pronounced, because the body needs more than a spark. It needs real support, sometimes even rescue.
That’s why at Very Well in Baltimore, MD, we pair acupuncture with evidence-based therapies that replenish what your body absolutely needs to function at its best:
PEMF Therapy restores the body’s natural electrical charge at the cellular level, driving circulation, improving oxygen delivery, and powering energy production. It makes every one of your body’s 30 trillion cells more capable of answering acupuncture’s call.
Red Light Therapy recharges mitochondria — the powerhouses of your cells — accelerating tissue repair, lowering inflammation, and amplifying overall vitality. It provides the essential fuel that acupuncture’s stimulus relies on.
Modern Sound Baths use resonance and vibration to guide the nervous system into deep parasympathetic states. By quieting stress signals, they free enormous reserves of energy that would otherwise be locked in tension and survival mode.
Infrared Sauna + Salt Room combines the cleansing benefits of salt air with far-infrared heat to stimulate circulation, reduce inflammation, and promote detoxification. They clear barriers to healing and prepare the body to rebuild.
Massage Therapy goes beyond releasing tight muscles. It improves circulation, supports lymphatic flow, and integrates the structural and energetic changes that acupuncture initiates. It ensures the benefits sparked by acupuncture can settle in and last longer.
Chinese Herbal Medicine — the traditional partner of acupuncture — supplies the body with essential nourishment and biochemical building blocks to restore tissues, regulate hormones, and stabilize long-term balance. Where acupuncture sparks change, herbs sustain and extend it.
Advanced Cupping — another classical supplement of acupuncture — provides a full hour of focused cupping therapy to release muscular tension, draw fresh blood into stagnant tissues, release trapped cellular waste, and support lymphatic flow. This deep, methodical approach accelerates recovery, relieves stress, and creates lasting space for healing.
Each of these therapies strengthens the body in a different way, but their true power emerges together. Acupuncture may light the spark, but it’s the fuel of complementary therapies that allows it to burn steadily — faster in its ignition, deeper in its reach, longer in its endurance.
At Very Well, we’ve created packages and memberships that weave these treatments into a single, supportive framework that takes the guesswork out of your health and wellness. Relief, recovery, resilience, vitality, inner peace, optimized aging… whatever your focus, results come more fully when therapies don’t just accompany one another, but amplify one another.