HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE WORK?

The body experiences the needle as a foreign invader and immediately sends extra blood supply to the area. The increased circulation flushes the constricted point with oxygen and nutrients and removes waste products such as lactic acid, thus promoting the healing process in that area.  In as similar healing response, the body will relax the muscle around the needle to allow the “foreign invader” to drop out.  For this reason, acupuncture also works for general muscle spasm.

Early Chinese physicians discovered that there is an energy network traversing just below the surface of the skin, which communicate from the exterior to the internal organs and structures at over 1,000 “acupoints” on the body.  This energy works in harmony with the body’s circulatory, nervous, muscular, digestive, genitourinary and other systems of the body.  When this vital energy becomes blocked or weakened, an effect in a body system or anatomic location becomes evident.  Stimulation of one or a combination of key “Acupoints” on the body may restore harmony to the affected area.
The human body’s energy flow courses over twelve meridians, channels or “rivers” that are normally well balanced.  If a disruption of this flow exists, it can alter the entire system, producing pain or symptoms in the body. It is difficult to understand Eastern philosophy in terms of Western scientific terms but one cannot disagree that it works. We really do not understand how an aspirin works, but for some illnesses, it does. The Chinese spent the last 5,000 years perfecting acupuncture as a primary method of healing and recently have added Western medicine to their treatment. Today, in the West, we are now incorporating acupuncture into our Western medicine.  All for the benefit of the patient. That is how it should be.
Acupuncture is taught in European medical schools and applied in nearly all fields of medicine, while in the United States acupuncture is rapidly taking a legitimate place as a valuable therapeutic technique.