Pain Management

Acupuncture Provides Pain Relief for Many Patients

Acupuncture is an ancient practice in which very fine sterile needles are inserted into the skin at strategic points on the body to relieve pain and treat disease. The Chinese developed acupuncture over 2500 years ago with the belief that energy flows through channels between the surface of the body and internal organs.

Chinese medicine maintains that the more than 2,000 acupuncture points on the human body connect with 12 main and eight secondary “meridians” or channels. Pain and disease are the result of these channels becoming blocked. By placing needles at various points on the channels, energy balance can be restored. When balance is restored health is achieved.

Western medicine’s view is that the placement of acupuncture needles at specific pain points releases endorphins and opioids, the body’s natural painkillers. It is believed that immune system cells as well as neurotransmitters and neurohormones in the brain are also stimulated. Research has shown that glucose and other bloodstream chemicals become elevated after acupuncture.

Endorsement from National Institutes of Health

According to the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, there is also evidence that stimulating acupuncture points enables electromagnetic signals to be relayed at a greater rate than under normal conditions. This may increase the flow of healing or pain-killing natural chemicals to injured areas.

When pain is relieved, patients feel a greater sense of well-being overall, physically and emotionally. As a result, they may heal faster. Many acupuncture points coincide with the “trigger points” described by Janet G. Travell, MD, whose textbook, Myofascial Pain & Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual, is widely used at pain management centers in the Western world.