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Acupuncture as a valid alternative to western medical treatment has met a great deal of resistance. This article shows how a recent study has proved it to be effective in relieving pain, and it also proves something quite unintended as well…

Acupuncture Pain Relief Really DOES Work

This is the finding of a recent study (May 2010) by scientists from Rochester Medical Center, New York State.

Although PressAwayPain.com is all about acupressure as a means of relieving pain and common ailments, I thought this finding relating to acupuncture was important enough to present on this blog. Since the two are so closely related, important developments for one are important for the other as well.

We know that acupuncture is one of several alternative healing systems that do not rely on orthodox Western medical principles, and because of this there has for many years been intense discussion and debate about whether it really works, or simply relies on the patient’s belief that it works to bring results.

Western medicine approaches a health problem directly, hence its heavy reliance on drugs and medications. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), of which acupuncture is a part, takes a more circumlocutory route, and believes in healing the body as a whole, rather than just a part of it. The balance between the body, mind and spirit is given paramount importance, and the correct flow of energy, or “chi”, throughout the body is the way in which this correct balance is established.

In the West we know acupuncture better than any other ancient Chinese medical practice. Acupuncture needles are inserted at certain precise points in the body in order to correct the deviant flow of energy and thereby restore health. To the western mind, there appears no reason why such treatment should make any difference to anything. Logically, doing that should not result in the cure of illness and the return of the patient to full health.

But the trouble for western medicine is that all the evidence shows that acupuncture works. And in many cases this is after orthodox western medicine has failed to cure the patient. Of course it can’t cure every case of ill health and disease any more than western medicine can, and to supporters of TCM it seems this has been used as an excuse by many people in the west to dismiss it as quackery.

The recent Rochester Medical Center findings have confronted the main objection, on the part of orthodox western medicine, to acupuncture, which has always been that the only benefits are psychosomatic. In other words, the patient has been persuaded that the acupuncture will work, and that belief helps bring about the desired result.

The team at Rochester took mice with sore paws and performed acupuncture on them in the same way they would do with humans. The mice, of course, would not have any beliefs about whether the treatment was going to work or not.

After the treatment the mice were measured for levels of adenosine, a natural painkiller the body makes when experiencing pain. Levels increased more than 20 fold and pain was eased by two thirds, compared to mice not so treated.

This seems to vindicate acupuncture as a valid alternative health treatment for reducing pain. In fairness, the results obtained from testing animals are not necessarily the same as those that would be obtained from testing on humans. And the team at Rochester declined to endorse any belief in acupuncture needles re-balancing the body’s “vital forces” or correcting an energy flow that has gone wrong.

That last question will have to be left open once more. But the patient suffering from pain is only seeking relief from it. Whether the flow of “qi”, or energy, throughout his body had become unbalanced but is now back in balance is naturally not his main concern. If the pain ceases, or the illness recedes, then the acupuncture treatment has worked and the patient is happy.

The ability of acupuncture treatment to help in non-pain related ways, such as helping smokers give up smoking, or helping people with fertility problems succeed with IVF treatment, cannot be explained through its ability to release natural painkillers within the body, as critics of acupuncture were quick to point out.

But this does not detract from these recent findings. It only serves to remind us that there’s more to acupuncture than acupuncture pain relief.

Philip Gegan

Discover the effectiveness of acupuncture as a form of pain relief, and how it can help you, at http://www.pressawaypain.com