Study seeks to show how acupuncture really works

(An ac­u­punc­ture nee­dle com­mon­ly used to­day. PHOTO/Takumi Fu­jita)

East­ern prac­ti­tion­ers say ac­u­punc­ture works by chang­ing en­er­gy flows in the body. West­ern sci­en­tists tend not to buy this ac­count, ar­gu­ing that the pro­posed en­er­gy fields have nev­er been seen or meas­ured.

Ac­u­punc­ture in­volves in­sert­ing thin nee­dles in­to the skin at se­lected points to treat a range of cond­itions. Sev­er­al stud­ies have shown that it works for cer­tain kinds of pain; a study last year found that ac­u­punc­ture beats con­ven­tion­al treat­ment for chron­ic low­er back pain.

The new stu­dy, pub­lished in the May 30 on­line is­sue of the jour­nal Na­ture Neu­ro­sci­ence, sug­gests that ac­u­punc­ture works by ac­ti­vat­ing pain-sup­press­ing re­cep­tors, or mol­e­cules, in the ar­ea of the body where the nee­dle is in­sert­ed.

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