Ok, this is a fun one. Gather ‘round, children, and bring marshmallows. It’s time to talk about where acupuncture and science meet and hang out and co-operate. Actually, bring the graham crackers and chocolate bars too, just because they’re really tasty mashed together. Like acupuncture and science. 

So, acupuncture. There’s what Tradition Chinese Medicine says it does, and what science thinks it does. I find it very comforting that they’re starting to merge into the same lane more and more. 

Traditional Chinese Medicine says that acupuncture activates acupuncture points and depending on the combination, type of needling, direction of needling, whether or not heat is added, and things like that, either tonifies (strengthens) or disperses (moves things that are stuck) or lowers (ie brings down heat). 

Basically, acupuncture stimulates these points and depending on the point and technique, different things happen.  

Science says – well, science says it isn’t exactly sure. But it’s curious. And that’s science’s job, to be curious. Now, there are a TON of studies out there that show that while they not be able to perfectly and completely quantify what acupuncture does, they know it does something.  Here are just a few links:

This article talks about Bonghan channels, which, y’know, just happen to be tiny, microscopic anatomical structures that go where acupuncture channels are. And they’ve been photographed. And they seem to act like fibre optic cables of sorts, carrying information throughout the body. 

This is a link to a study where they found electrical phenomena moving through acupuncture meridians – they needled an acu-point and found that “electrophysiological uniqueness in the form of a greater bioelectric potential amplitude when a proximal acupoint is stimulated and the response is measured at a distal acupoint along the same meridian” – but the same thing didn’t happen if they needled a non-acupuncture point. In other words, acupuncture meridians transmitted electrical current along their channels in a way that other places didn’t. 

This is a research paper that concludes that acupuncture meridians transfer ions. Ions are atoms or groups of atoms with a positive or negative electrical charge. So…this one talks about a little ionic chain reaction of sorts that gets set off when meridian points are stimulated. 

There are SO many studies about this, and what the science keeps saying is that SOMETHING is happening. So…what does that mean? 

Well, different points do different things. I remember years ago, Dana and I had just walked into his parents’ house, and his mom started yelling at me to come upstairs NOW. Stumbling up the stairs in a hurry…um, I mean, waltzing gracefully up the stairs super extra gracefully, I fell into the tv room asking what was wrong. Nothing. She had Dr. Oz on tv, and he was demonstrating that when pressure was applied to the lower back, a certain part of the brain lit up. When they stimulated KI-3 (a great point to help the lower back), the same part of the brain lit up. She just wanted me to see that acupuncture was hitting mainstream. 🙂 

So acupuncture points map onto body parts and conditions.  While most acupuncturists who learn in English memorize the points by number, there are some names that are helpful or just plain fun. Stomach-35 is ‘Dubi’ which translates to ‘Calf nose.’ It’s at the base of the kneecap, and it does kind of look like the nose of a cow, for instance. 

A lot of people have had acupuncture done by a physiotherapist or someone else who uses “local needling” – so if your knee hurts, they needle Dubi, which is right under the kneecap. The body’s resources zip towards the knee. One of my teachers once said that if you stick something through the skin (like, say, an acupuncture needle), the body will keep paying attention to it until it leaves. So one theory is that if the body finds a tiny needle near the knee, it will bring all sorts of things there to heal that spot. And hey, coincidentally enough, all of the body chemicals that are there just happen to be in the right area to heal the knee as well. Thanks, neutrophils! Here’s looking at you, collagen.

But – whether you call it fibre optic transmission, ionic, electric, or something else, these points are programmed in to do other things as well. That same point at the knee, ST-35? Great for treating athlete’s foot.  Large Intestine 4 (the ‘headache point’ a lot of people know in that meaty part of the hand between the thumb and forefinger) is the command point for the head and face. So, needle or press on the hand, and you help the head, whether it’s headaches or eye pain. But since bodies are miraculous things, that same point can also help to induce labor, help with ‘evil wind’ (flu), help with pain, take down fevers, and more.

One day in acupuncture school, a teacher was talking about the history of acupuncture, and he asked what we thought was more likely: did they discover acupuncture meridians because some person or persons years ago had a sense of the movement of energy in the body, and they found a way to trace that Qi and see where it went and what it did….or did they just happen to poke each other with sharp sticks and accidentally found out it helped? I voted for the first answer. The teacher voted for the second. Ah well, that’s life. (But sharp sticks, really?  Yeah, sure, this amazingly complex system was discovered by the equivalent of drunk frat boys stabbing each other and giggling and then going ‘crap, your headache’s gone? Dude.’) 

So, what does acupuncture do? In TCM terms, it does everything from calming the Shen (mind / spirit), helping with anxiety and depression, clearing heat, inducing cooling, releasing pain, helping the body deal with pathogens – you name it, acupuncture is designed to help you with it. How exactly does it do that? Science doesn’t know yet. TCM people will tell you it regulates and balances the Qi.  And sometimes – like when you press PC-6 and people stop puking, it just feels like really cool magic. Scientific Traditional Chinese Magic. 

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