HOW IT WORKS

From Chris Kresser, in "Chinese Medicine Demystified: (Part IV): How Acupuncture Works." The Healthy Skeptic, March 11, 2010.

Acupuncture affects every major system of the body, including the cardiac, gastrointestinal, circulatory, cerebral, genitourinary, endocrine and immune systems.  Broadly speaking, acupuncture has three primary effects:

1. It relieves pain.

2. It reduces inflammation.

3. It restores homeostasis.

Homeostasis refers to the body’s ability to regulate its environment and maintain internal balance. All diseases involve a disturbance of homeostasis, and nearly all diseases involve some degree of pain and inflammation. In fact, research over the last several decades suggests that many serious conditions like heart disease previously thought to have other causes are in fact primarily caused by chronic inflammation. If we understand that most diseases are characterized by pain, inflammation and disturbance of homeostasis, we begin to understand why acupuncture can be effective for so many conditions.

Several modes of action have been identified for acupuncture, and the mechanisms can get quite complex. But ultimately acupuncture is a remarkably simple technique that depends entirely upon one thing: the stimulation of the peripheral nervous system. It’s important to point out that when nerves supplying acupoints are cut or blocked there is no acupuncture effect.

The following is a list of mechanisms that have been identified so far:

Acupuncture promotes blood flow. This is significant because everything the body needs to heal is in the blood, including oxygen, nutrients we absorb from food, immune substances, hormones, analgesics (painkillers) and anti-inflammatories. Restoring proper blood flow is vital to promoting and maintaining health. For example if blood flow is diminished by as little as 3% in the breast area cancer may develop. Blood flow decreases as we age and can be impacted by trauma, injuries and certain diseases. Acupuncture has been shown to increase blood flow and vasodilation in several regions of the body.

Acupuncture stimulates the body’s built-in healing mechanisms. Acupuncture creates “micro traumas” that stimulate the body’s ability to spontaneously heal injuries to the tissue through nervous, immune and endocrine system activation. As the body heals the micro traumas induced by acupuncture, it also heals any surrounding tissue damage left over from old injuries.

Acupuncture releases natural painkillers. Inserting a needle sends a signal through the nervous system to the brain, where chemicals such as endorphins, norepinephrine and enkephalin are released. Some of these substances are 10-200 times more potent than morphine!

Acupuncture reduces both the intensity and perception of chronic pain. It does this through a process called “descending control normalization”, which involves the serotonergic nervous system.

Acupuncture relaxes shortened muscles. This in turn releases pressure on joint structures and nerves, and promotes blood flow.

Acupuncture reduces stress. This is perhaps the most important systemic effect of acupuncture. Recent research suggests that acupuncture stimulates the release of oxytocin, a hormone and signaling substance that regulates the parasympathetic nervous system. You’ve probably heard of the “fight-or-flight” response that is governed by the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system has been called the “rest-and-digest” or “calm-and-connect” system, and in many ways is the opposite of the sympathetic system. Recent research has implicated impaired parasympathetic function in a wide range of autoimmune diseases, including arthritis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.*

From Brad Whisnant's, "The Essential Acupuncturists Guide to Head and Neck Pain," 2016

"Our medicine is real, it is a medicine based on the physical and chemical connections of the body. The images work based on embryology. In a nutshell? You were one cell at one time, and you are 40 trillion cells now. The neural connections are everywhere. So originally, you and I were a tube called the neural streak. As quoted from David Wells, a brilliant healer: "The First visible structure in the developing embryo is the "neural streak;" the early brain and spinal cord. The connections between skin (ectoderm), musculoskeletal system (mesoderm) and organs (endoderm) are already in place before the tissues differentiate and the limbs divide." 

What that means is, as this "tube" divided into segments and segments into limbs, all of these pieces came from one piece and thus one piece can affect anther piece. So images work because, to you and I, we see different (parts); To our brain and its connections, it's all the same."