How does Acupuncture Work? Part 2
I hadn’t really planned on there being a Part 2 until I realised I hadn’t addressed any of the other stuff that gets included in the explanation of acupuncture…energy, Qi, fascia, meridians, channels. I mean lets face it, people write whole books on how acupuncture works and the relevant theories and I’m trying to squeeze it into 500 words! What we talked about in Part 1 was most of the physiological based reasons why acupuncture works, particularly relevant to pain.
Kick starting the healing process
Shutting the gate on pain
Release of happy hormones in the brain
This doesn’t really explain though why acupuncture can help with the whole host of other conditions it’s shown to improve for example stopping smoking or nausea. There is good evidence to show that Opioids are released when acupuncture is used to treat pain. But Opioids are also a cause of nausea, so how can acupuncture help with nausea? There must be more mechanisms at play?
1. Fascia
I’ve talked about this before on my facebook page and you may or may not have heard of my chicken explanation! If you look at a piece of raw chicken, what you'll see is a fine silky mesh a bit like skin but not skin. This is fascia and runs in long slings through the body and made up of sheets of connective tissue. The sheets and fascia surround all our structures and help to give support and strength to them, a little like an external moveable skeleton. The fascia also sections the body into parts. Interestingly the fascial lines follow, in a lot of cases, the acupuncture channels! This leads me onto defining the channel or in traditional Chinese acupuncture the meridian. Since reading more books on acupuncture I have stopped calling them meridians and call them acupuncture channels. It better explains the anatomy that we know and understand. Giving us more context to the theories of energy, electricity and flow. If we think of this long anatomical sheet running over tissue, separating compartments and not allowing fluid to pass through it, we can start to imagine a small micro-space between the fascia and the muscle underneath. When tissue is dysfunctional we often have trigger points, these are myofascial in nature…myo being muscle and fascia being the silky sheet. So the trigger point being a tightness and restriction of the myofascial area. Inserting a needle into the myofascial restriction/trigger point will cause a mechanical release of the tissue. Tissue which was ‘on’ and never able to switch off is then able to relax and move/react normally to the demands placed upon it. This in itself can lead to improved function and reduced levels of pain. Great for an explanation of acupuncture in Physiotherapy again but not so much for other health gains.
2. Energy
Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle! Ok not the 90’s hit, apologies I can’t help singing it whenever energy is mentioned! This is where I think western medicine gets a little dismissive of acupuncture because there’s talk of energy flow or Qi as the Traditional Chinese Medicine approach names it. Now let’s cast our mind back briefly to the acupuncture channel where the acupuncture points are located along it’s length. So we’re kind of back to the anatomy and physiology of the fascia. it’s made up of collagen and collagen is shown to produce it’s own electric charge when it’s been deformed and also to have conductive properties! Skin conduction has also been found to be higher at the acupuncture points. So it’s worth questioning does the insertion of a needle onto the acupuncture point cause a production of energy in the collagen and is this the Qi the Chinese talk about? Does it move along the fascia due to the conductive nature of collagen? Is this the acupuncture channel and flow of energy that is required for health in all our body systems? All of our cells have an electrical charge across them, the heart contracts from an electrical impulse through the tissue and the nerves pass impulses through changes in voltage. Not dismissing energy is important but I firmly believe we have to look at the ‘energy’ from a scientific basis and unfortunately this is where my knowledge becomes more limited. The more reading I do the more questions I have that need answering the which leads me onto my last thought on energy which I read in a book called The Spark in the Machine written by Daniel Keown. Dolly the sheep was the first cloned sheep. All of the genetic material was there but the cell wasn’t functioning until a small electric charge was passed into the cell and it’s cellular activity was effectively ‘switched on’.
Thanks for your time I hope it’s opened your mind and not blown it too much!!!
This book is a great read for anyone interested in anatomy physiology, embryology and acupuncture.
The Spark in the Machine by Daniel Keown 2014
