How Acupuncture Rewires Your Brain

Acupuncture is more than sticking needles into select pressure points on the body. Acupuncture (no matter where those needles touch your skin) has a significant impact on the wiring of your brain.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) looks at acupuncture as a way to heal your entire body. Instead of singling out one issue (say a migraine) TCM practitioners look at one issue as part of a larger, whole body problem.

Acupuncture is one of the techniques TCM practitioners use to combat whole-body issues. The general understanding of acupuncture treatment is to insert small needles into various pressure points around the body to open up your body’s energy flow from blockages and help relieve your symptoms.

But there is a lot more science happening than just the insertion of tiny needles.

Acupuncture Rewires Your Brain

Many studies over the last several decades have shown that acupuncture has a positive, long-lasting effect on your brain.

Whether you are seeking treatment for migraines, digestive issues, arthritis, or a handful of other common health issues, there is a level of pain associated with each.

Acupuncture has long been thought (and now scientifically proven) to block your brain’s pain receptors and increase your endorphins while increasing blood flow throughout your body.

One recent study showed that after eight weeks of acupuncture, carpal tunnel patients had significantly decreased pain not just in their wrist but in the brain region that involved pain perception, and improved symptoms stayed for at least three months after the acupuncture treatment.

According to another acupuncture researcher, Hugh MacPherson, “being pricked with needles seems to reduce activity in areas of the brain normally associated with pain, dubbed “the pain matrix. Rather than activating the pain matrix, [acupuncture] actually de-activates it.”

Aside from releasing endorphins, acupuncture is being found to actually deactivate areas of the brain associated with pain.

The fact that these findings aren’t just a one-off study, but being proven over and over again brings a new validity to acupuncture and helps those on the fence give acupuncture a try.

How to Get Started with Acupuncture

Acupuncture helps reduce pain and open up blood flow throughout your body, which is to say acupuncture can help with almost any issue you have but here is a list of common issues:

• Acne
• Allergies
• Anxiety
• Cancer pain
• Cardiac neurosis
• Common colds
• Constipation
• Depression
• Diarrhea
• Digestive discomfort
• Fibromyalgia
• Gastrointestinal issues
• Headaches/migraines
• Hypertension
• Infertility
• Insomnia
• Knee pain
• Morning sickness
• Nausea and vomiting
• Neck pain
• Osteoarthritis
• PMS
• Renal colic
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Sciatica
• Sjögren syndrome
• Stress
• Stroke
• Tennis elbow
• TMJ

Unlike a general practitioner, an acupuncturist will look at each of your health issues as symptoms to a larger, whole-body problem. Which means they will seek to understand what is causing your headaches and address that, as well as give you relief from a throbbing head.

To find out more and learn exactly what an acupuncture treatment will look like for you, give us a call today.