How Does Acupuncture Work?
“I often tell my patients who are a little skeptical and have grounded their beleifs in the more Western form of medicine to think of Acupuncture as having the world's longest and largest clinic trial.” - Melanie McLeod, R.Ac.
Why Does Acupuncture Work and What Is It?
We must first examine the underlying concept of acupuncture, which is the notion that humans possess qi (pronounced chee) which can be thought of as the body's intelligence. The body can behave in all the ways it is aware of in order to regain balance and health - and it's going in all the time as it maintains homeostasis. For instance, each cell in your body is aware of its surrounding cells and is capable of responding when prompted. One technique to activate our body's intrinsic self-healing capacities is acupuncture, which is one of the methods utilized in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In a modern clinic, acupuncture is performed by inserting sterile, single-use needles at predetermined body locations. The process is generally painless, albeit the needles can cause an acupoint, or point where a needle is inserted, to feel dull and achy. Acupuncture sites are intriguing because, up until recently, no one understood why they seem to be specialized tissue.
What Does Acupuncture Do?
A study led by clinical endocrinologist Helene M. Langevin at the University of Vermont College of Medicine discovered that when the body "grabbed" an acupuncture needle, there was a detectable "pull-out force." These spots are more electrically conductive than non-acupuncture points, therefore the needle grasp at that site is more forceful.
More importantly, though, Langevin and her colleagues discovered that when they rotated or manipulated the needles—the connective tissue beneath the skin became "mechanically attached."
"Even a small amount of rotation caused the connective tissue to wrap around the needle, like spaghetti winding around a fork." Langevin writes. Langevin also discovered that this stretching of the tissue continues throughout the acupuncture treatment, resulting in chemical adjustments at the cellular level that boost electrical conductivity.
This raises the question of why we would have created these regions that are extremely electro-conductive and common to all of our bodies. The answer appears to be found in embryology. Electrical signaling forms a complicated web that helps an embryo grow. In this Tufts University video of a developing frog embryo, for instance, we can clearly see the electrical charge that appears to be lightning traveling across the embryo's face. If you overlay a map of the major acupoints with a map of the embryological nodes, you will find that they are typically in the same location. Our bodies produce specific nodes to cause this effect. This makes us think that the electro-conductive tissue that forms us is still somewhat active and capable of regulating us after we are born.
Connective tissue connects us head to toe - it's like the mycelium network in the forest; as Langevin notes, "One could draw a line between any two points of the body via a path of connective tissue." And it serves a variety of purposes, including holding organs up and in, providing a route for blood vessels and nerves, storing energy, joining muscle to bone, and conducting electricity.
Acupuncture For Internal Conditions
A good acupuncturist can select the ideal arrangement of acupoints to cause a change in the body. Then, based on a Chinese medicine diagnosis, they choose where to insert the needles. This technique for diagnosing locates links and patterns in the body. It conveys the complexity of our totality and the interrelationships between our organ systems. And how are these messages sent across the body's deepest organs? Since recent evidence has shown that such stimulation to the connective tissue can be sensed at a cellular level - it follows that we can decrease chronic inflammation, reduce pain, and possibly even inhibit the growth of cancer cells or fibrotic tissue through intervention at these points.
Acupuncture For Sports & Orthopedic Injuries
Although many of the body's mechanisms for healing are the same for treating sports and orthopedic injuries as they are for internal conditions, the approach is slightly different.
Injuries can be caused by a single trauma, a repetitive strain - or a combination of both. When the tissues begin to heal the process may be interrupted by debris from the initial inflammatory response, and/or it may become re-irritated. This can lead to the tissues becoming fibrotic, or thick and layered, which inhibits blood flow and the flow of our connective tissue - which we know is the way in which other innate healing mechanisms operate. In Chinese Medicine, we call this lack of flow and circulation stagnation.
To treat this stagnation with acupuncture, acupuncturists trained in sports medicine will select anatomically significant points to insert the needles. The difference from the internal medicine point selection process is that points used for injuries are less rooted in a Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis and more in the body's mechanics, referral pain patterns, and the muscles and tissues which are affected.
Through this process, we can relieve pain and discomfort by relaxing muscles and stimulating the release of endorphins (natural pain-relieving chemicals) and serotonin (the happy hormone) to promote feelings of well-being. We can decrease inflammation, reduce muscle tightness and spasms, promote healthy circulation, and reset tension patterns in the muscles and tissues.
We also relax the nervous system by activating the rest and digest response (the opposite of the fight or flight response) which affects how the brain sends pain signals to the body. An overwhelmed or stressed nervous system will respond to pain more intensely and lower your threshold for pain.
Lastly, this process aids tissue healing and repair by stimulating the release of fibroblasts; these are the cells found in connective tissue that secrete collagen proteins to maintain tissue health.
It's incredible to watch as western medical applications are able to explain the observational approach that developed over thousands of years in traditional medicine. We at Salmon Arm Wellness Clinic think that everyone should experience the incredible effects of acupuncture - so what are you waiting for?