How Acupuncture Works

A Fantastic Natural Pain Relief Technique

To understand how acupuncture works try to recall the feeling when you run into a furniture or stone with bar toes.

Remember?... Ouch.. First you were surprised and without fully realizing what happened, your toe was pulled back via a reflex movement... Now, what did you feel then?....Yes, it was kind of a sudden pain, a plain, sharp and alerting feeling.

And then? ... Then came this dumb, very painful ache from deep down, "crawling" up your leg, through your stomach, further up to the brain. You might have felt sick by then, you might have yelped and cried.... in short: it was awful, wasn't it? And this pain didn't fade for a long time, you really suffered.

The first, short and sharp sort of pain is "travelling" with a speed of 12 - 30 meter/second over myelinized nerval fibres from the toe to the brain. This is really fast, it compares to a speed of 43 - 108 km/hour or 27 - 67 mph!

This fast pain has priority over other nerval signals, because an immediate protective "response" or reflex-movement is required to prevent serious tissue damage to, in this case, the toe.

Every other chronic pain sensation needs to "wait" to be picked up by the brain as long as it deals with this acute and sharp pain stimulation.

If you'd suffered from tooth-ache at the same time, you would have almost forgotten about that, because your toe hurts so much.

The "aftermath" or the terribly aching, awful and aversive pain sensation you feel after you pulled the toe away, travels at a much slower pace from toe to brain. It uses C-fibres that are switched over a few times between nerve axons.

This kind of pain really hurts, makes you feel sick and you suffer. By now you certainly have learnt that it is better to avoid stones or furniture with your toe in the future.

C-fibres are connected to the limbic system within the brain. This is where on top of the pain emotions are released and which causes the suffering, depression etc.

Acupuncture Needle - Brain Stimulation through Pain Simulation

Inserting an acupuncture needle into the skin over an acupuncture point should not be painful.

The insertion will cause a similar stimulation of the peripheral and central nervous system as the fast travelling alarm-reaction described in the example above, but without damaging any tissue.

This way the brain is being "fooled", thinking there is somewhere in the body potential damage going on. Regulating and healing processes, protective endorphines and repair mechanisms are started and being targeted towards the actual, chronically painful area of the body.

This is how acupuncture works as a natural pain relief and a regulating healing process in humans and animals.
Chronic pain in an area that is treated will eventually fade away, inflammation calms down and self healing mechanisms can take over.