Acupuncture helps with pain

Acupuncture Helps Against Chronic Pain: A medical school study has wondered why acupuncture is actually so effective.

(01.06.2010) Naturopathy has been proving it for several decades, for example, acupuncture treatment is very effective for chronic pain. So far, conventional medical scientists have not been able to explain how the attached needles actually affect the human organism. A partial aspect of the effects of acupuncture treatment has now been deciphered by scientists from Rochester University in New York. The body's own molecule "adenosine" seems to play an important role in the treatment of pain.

If acupuncture is done correctly, adenosine can block the release of neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are biochemical substances that transmit information from one nerve cell to another via nerve cell contact sites. By blocking adenosine, patients can again sleep better, the heartbeat can be regulated, and blood pressure lowered. Adenosine can also be anti-inflammatory. Also, chronic pain can be cut or reduced by nerve cells in the injured skin are interrupted.

To gain this insight, researchers at the University of Rochester have conducted a large-scale acupuncture study, which appeared in the journal journal "Nature Neuroscience". Thus, they use needles in injured mouse paws, as practiced by non-medical practitioners during an acupuncture session in humans. It has been found that adenosine becomes active in deeper layers of the skin when the needles are properly set to treat pain on the foot.

The result: the treatment reduced the pain by about two-thirds. In the course of treatment and after, the concentration of adenosine was 24 times higher than before. When the researchers artificially increased adenosine, ie without acupuncture needles, pain reduction was also noted. In the course of the study, scientists continued to try to increase the effect of acupuncture by adding adenosine. For this purpose, a cancer drug was used, the effect of which makes it difficult for the tissue to degrade adenosine. The artificial administration of the drug increased the adenosine concentration three-fold and the effect of the acupuncture could be tripled.

The principles of acupuncture are based on the foundations of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is already around 2000 years old. This includes the idea of ​​a life force called "qi". The life force should move in the human body in a constant flow. According to these principles, discomfort can arise when it comes to physical or mental imbalances. However, conventional medicine considers all modes of action decoupled and therefore concentrates only on individual partial aspects of the body's own reactions. Treatment successes could be jeopardized by the disconnected approach. (Sb)

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Acupuncture effective in pregnancy depression
New study: Acupuncture in the brain is effective?

Picture credits: Image: © Sabine Weiße / PIXELIO.