East Asian medicine uses a preventive as well as interventive approach, engaging the patient as the primary agent of health. While the adaptation of East Asian medicine in the west has reduced and fragmented practice through the regulation of acupuncture alone, those trained in the East Asian medicine use the full diversity of techniques and recommendations. Most research into East Asian medicine has focused on acupuncture, and outcomes conclusions are weakened because acupuncture is seldom used alone in the clinical setting. Still, recent study into the biological mechanisms of acupuncture strengthens the basic understanding of its therapeutic potential.

Biological mechanisms of acupuncture
The healing mechanism of cutaneous and subcutaneous therapies of East Asian medicine including acupuncture, moxibustion, gua sha, and cupping are complex and depend on the potential within the points or areas treated and the nature of an illness.

Practitioners feel for the precise location of points often found in a slight crook or depression that correspond to convergence of connective tissue planes. The patient senses tenderness or pain more at the point than in surrounding tissue, as is the case with trigger points Seventy percent of common acupuncture sites have structures identical to trigger points. A point’s potential for therapeutic value is reflected in its state of sensitivity, or lack thereof. Acupuncture points’ healing potential have been attributed to changes in nerve tissue; chemistry within the nervous system; changes in electrical potential; and altered structures in the connective tissue that are activated with the insertion and turning of the acupuncture needle.

While research on the physiology of acupuncture has been contributing to the development of neuroscience, the questions posed by the scientific researchers have been grounded in a worldview that functions mostly outside the demands of the acupuncture clinical encounter. Associating acupuncture with endorphins discovered in the 1970’s came at a time of initiatives related to drug addiction, where researchers were looking for safe and lucrative pharmacological answers to negative drug dependency. This time and setting defined acupuncture as pain relieving while the other numerous and valuable effects of acupuncture were dismissed as ‘patriotic zeal’. Since additional biological mechanisms were not understood at that time, the misconception that acupuncture only treats pain became well established. To this day insurance companies may require a pain code to reimburse for acupuncture.

And while most acupuncture research is still focused on treatment of pain, evidence that acupuncture, for example, prevents recurrent cystitis in susceptible women, and shortens initial stages of labor,in addition to reducing labor pain, points to the healing effect of acupuncture beyond reducing pain.

Content last modified on Nov 20, 2008