How Acupuncture Really Works to Relieve Pain

Acupuncture has been used to relieve pain for thousands of years. For many of those years, scientists had little understanding of how this ancient practice worked. But now, new technology has made it possible for the scientific world to gain a deeper understanding of what acupuncture does to the body.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, acupuncture has been used to relieve pain in patients suffering from a wide variety of disorders, including nerve pain, knee and hand pain, shingles, headaches, fibromyalgia, and more.

The Flow of Qi
Acupuncture is based on one of the main tenets of traditional Chinese medicine: Qi. Qi is the flow of energy that runs through 12 meridians throughout the body. In acupuncture, very fine needles are inserted into the body at various acupoints along those meridians, affecting various parts of the body. 

For many years, according to National Geographic, Western science remained skeptical of acupuncture, and considered the pain relief it supplied to be a result of the placebo effect. Now, however, with advances in imaging and research, scientists are beginning to understand how acupuncture may work on a biological level. 

A Cascade Effect
It starts with the slight movement a needle makes as it is inserted into the skin. Known as mechanotransduction, this sends out biochemical signals that cause skin mast cells to release compounds like histamine, serotonin, and adenosine into the tissue close to where the needle entered the body. Those chemical signals then stimulate nerve endings, which send signals to the regions of the brain linked to processing and regulating pain. 

In addition, research published in The Anatomical Record found that the map of the meridians overlaps by 80 percent with connective tissue networks in the body. Another study in The Journal of Pain found that in a double-blind placebo trial, while placebo needles did provide pain relief to the subjects in the placebo group, the pain relief did not last as long as the relief provided by actual acupuncture needles. Among participants who responded to treatment, the placebo-related pain relief began to diminish after about four weeks, while acupuncture-related pain relief persisted for longer, with effects lasting for up to 12 weeks for some participants.

Though scientists have been skeptical of this ancient practice, research is increasingly showing that acupuncture has a biological basis. While based on different methodologies than Western science, the practitioners who developed acupuncture over the centuries were also keen observers of the human body, and this revered treatment has made its way back into the spotlight.