How does Acupuncture work? Well, the jury is out on that one!
Acupuncture has worked for thousands of years and it is only since the age of enlightenment (that was in the 17th century )and the promotion of the ‘scientific method’ that drive has been to work out how and why things work, not just for acupuncture, but for everything in the world around us. In recent years, as far as acupuncture is concerned, progress has been made by conducting research trials to demonstrate that this ancient form of chinese medicine really does work. Only with fairly recent scientific developments, such as MRI scanning has the ‘how it works’ bit started to be a little less mystifying.
Recent studies have shown that needling a specific acupuncture point in the body can produce a whole lot of activity in the brain. Some points produced considerable activity in the areas of the brain that perceive and react to pain, another point traditionally used to treat eye and vision problems, was found to produce much activity in the part of the brain that processed visual stimulus.
The bottom line is that acupuncture has been around for over 3000 years and in the last 10 years we have been able to measure that is actually does something!….I can’t wait to find out what we will know in 1000 years or so!