Stuck on You
Like many people, I’m not a fan of shots. Plain and simple: Keep your needles to yourself. So the idea of letting someone stick tons of needles in me by having acupuncture seemed bizarre. But after putting it off for a long time, I figured I’d give it a try to see if I could get rid of some nagging back and neck pain.
To my great relief – literally – I felt at most a very mild sensation from the acupuncture needles, and sometimes felt nothing at all. But my pain pretty much disappeared. When it was over, I wondered why I had waited so long to try it. After all, acupuncture is an ancient healing method. Treatments that don’t work don’t last for millennia.
In spite of a long history of success, acupuncture remains way out on the fringe of mainstream medicine, and, to be honest, is still a mystery to most people in the West. The idea that a few thin needles could wipe out pain or depression doesn’t sit well with a lot of folks. But with the results of two recent studies, all that may be changing. A little bit anyway.
Tapping the reward chemical
In the first study, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital investigated the effects of acupuncture by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which reveals changes in blood flow, as well as fluctuations in blood oxygen.
Manipulation of needles was performed on a specific acupuncture point on the hand in 13 healthy subjects. When fMRI was used before, during and after acupuncture treatments, clear changes in the imaging occurred in several different areas of the brain in 11 of the subjects. These imaging changes indicated a decrease of blood flow, described by the researchers as a “quieting down” of the regions of the brain associated with pain, mood and cravings.
One of the researchers – Harvard Medical School radiologist Bruce Rosen – told the Associated Press (AP) that the regions of the brain affected in the test are particularly susceptible to a brain chemical called dopamine, which he describes as a reward chemical. Mr. Rosen speculates that when the blood flow is reduced, the resulting dopamine activity triggers the release of endorphins, which are pain relief chemicals that provide comfort.
As one neurobiologist pointed out to the AP, the next step should be a controlled study in which patients undergoing fMRI analysis would receive genuine acupuncture while another group of patients would receive stimulation of bogus points. Until then, this study provides an important first step in understanding how the brain responds to acupuncture pain relief.
Brain relief
Study number two was quite different from the Harvard study. As reported in the British Medical Journal, just over 400 subjects who experienced chronic headaches (predominantly migraine) were recruited by doctors throughout England and Wales.
Subjects were randomly chosen to receive either usual care (typically medication), or acupuncture treatments for a period of one year. Those receiving acupuncture were restricted to a maximum of 12 treatments every three months and also had the option of using medication in instances where the acupuncture failed. During the study period, each subject kept a diary, rating the severity of headaches with a six-point scale.
When the diaries were analyzed, researchers found that, compared with the usual care group, those in the acupuncture group had an average of 22 fewer days with a headache, and some had well over 30. Acupuncture patients also used 15 percent less medication, made 25 percent fewer visits to the doctor and had 15 percent fewer sick days off from work.
Based on these uniformly positive outcomes, the authors of the study concluded that acupuncture leads to “clinically relevant benefits for primary care patients with chronic headache.” Furthermore, they suggest that the UK National Health Service be expanded to include acupuncture services.
Finding your acupuncturist
In a BBC News article about the UK study, the medical director of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, Dr Mike Cummings noted that in addition to headaches, other conditions that typically respond well to acupuncture include neck, shoulder and back pain and osteoarthritis in the knee.
I can certainly vouch for the relief that acupuncture can bring to neck and back pain. And I have a friend who successfully overcame insomnia through acupuncture, and we’ve both found that it relieves stress, as well. I’d also be very interested to hear from any HSI members who have tried acupuncture for these or any other health issues – no matter what your experience may have been, good or bad.
If you’d like to try acupuncture for yourself, it’s very important to locate an experienced and board-certified acupuncture practitioner. You can find a listing of certified acupuncturists on the web site for the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (nccaom.org). Using your Zip Code, you can easily search for practitioners in your area who have national board certification. And the best news is that many health insurance plans in the U.S. are actually starting to cover acupuncture treatments, so check your policy before you choose your practitioner.
To Your Good Health,
Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute
“Acupuncture Modulates the Limbic System and Subcortical Gray Structures of the Human Brain: Evidence from fMRI Studies in Normal Subjects” Human Brain Mapping, Vol. 9, No. 1, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
“Acupuncture’s Secret: Blood Flow to Brain” Marilyn Elias, USA Today, 3/3/04, usatoday.com
“Acupuncture for Chronic Headache in Primary Care: Large, Pragmatic, Randomised Trial” British Medical Journal, Vol. 328, No. 7442, bmj.bmjjournals.com
“Acupuncture ‘Beats Headache Pain'” BBC News, 3/15/04, news.bbc.co.uk
