How Does Acupuncture Treat Pain

If there is free flow, there is no pain; if there is pain, there is lack of free flow.” ~ Huang Di Nei Jing

Pain is a bitch. But seriously, pain is an unavoidable part of every day live. None of us are exempt from experiencing bouts of pain throughout our lives whether is a stubbed toe, broken bone, or some unexplained neck pain that plagues you every time you sit down at the computer to work. Luckily, in my line of work as an acupuncturist I am often working with patients to treat pain. Often when a new patient lays down on the table and I get a couple of needles in, I get asked the question: so how does acupuncture work, anyway?

Simply put, acupuncture affects the flow of qi in the body. In a crude translation, qi is energy and everything in the universe is made up of qi. Some forms are more solid and dense than others and yet others are more ethereal. As I mentioned in the post about acupuncture and anxiety, even emotions are a form of qi, and experiencing emotions are movements of qi. The body is made up of qi and in the body qi flows along the meridians, which create an intricate subway system of communication throughout the body allowing the body to work an an interconnected whole. When there is an imbalance in one part of the body or a disturbance of the flow of qi in a portion of the body, it will have an effect on the entire system.

This brings us back to the quote above. “If there is free flow, there is no pain; if there is pain, there is lack of free flow.” When there is a knot or a kink—or as the classics describe it, a thorn—in the flow of qi, there will be pain. Acupuncture can help remove the thorn, smooth the flow of qi and stop pain.

But what does that mean in terms you’re more familiar with? To be honest, it’s hard to say. That is, it’s hard to translate the story of Eastern medicine into the story of Western medicine—there is no exact translation or a one-to-one conversion. However, we can overlay classical descriptions with modern research and knowledge and come to some conclusions. What we do know is that the body has a variety of interconnected communication systems built into it: the nervous system, connective tissue planes, or metabolic products and biochemicals that travel in the blood, like nutrients oxygen, hormones, neurotransmitters, etc. These system, looked at in different contexts, can describe the function of qi. And acupuncture can help the body auto-regulate these systems.

In Western biomedical understanding, the stimulation of acupuncture points along the body activates neural pathways that communicate from the acupuncture point to the spinal cord to the brain deactivating the pain response. In addition, acupuncture activates numerous endogenous (which means naturally occurring in the body) opioids while at the same time improving the body’s sensitivity to those opioids. Acupuncture has also been shown to release a variety of biochemicals that are involved in pain reduction such as ATP, adenosine, GABA and substance P. Particularly important for athletes, acupuncture can help increase proprioception and affects mechanical signaling through connective tissues.

While this is a truckload of different mechanism by which acupuncture works, they all help the body to auto-regulate and in essence heal itself. That’s where acupuncture really shines, by interacting with your body’s own resources it coaxes it back into better balance, better health and better function.