Doctors Surprised by Acupuncture Benefits
Source: Murfreesboro Post
http://www.murfreesboropost.com/locals-often-surprised-by-benefits-of-acupuncture-cms-43052
DR. MARK KESTNER
Published: October 14, 2015
Earlier this year I was treating a local medical physician with acupuncture for a shoulder, elbow and wrist problem she’d had for years. She had previously undergone surgery with only minimal improvement. After only a few treatments she remarked that she was amazed the pain was completely gone after years of hurting. She said she had no idea what to expect, but was very pleasantly surprised by her amazing response.
Learning, using and now teaching acupuncture has been a remarkable experience. When I first began my earliest research into acupuncture more than 40 years ago, most people had no idea what was involved. If they had ever heard of it they only knew it was something associated with China and involved sticking needles into people.
Today, although most people have heard of acupuncture, unfortunately most people’s knowledge of the treatment remains about the same as it was 40 years ago.
Although the actual knowledge of this intriguing form of treatment is sparse, I have been amazed to watch more people opening up to the option of acupuncture.
In the past few months I have treated surgeons, emergency physicians, nurse practitioners, dentists, nurses, lawyers, ministers, administrative assistants, school teachers, bankers, mechanics, surveyors, restaurateurs, home makers, retirees, athletes, musicians and practically every other vocational group imaginable.
It seems that people are much more open to trying the treatment than I would have expected forty years ago.
New patients often ask the same questions: Does it hurt? Does it work? How does it work?
No, our acupuncture doesn’t hurt. Although some patients may occasionally feel a tiny sensation like a mosquito bite at first, most patients literally do not feel the needle insertions at all. The needles are so fine and I have developed an insertion skill that makes the process virtually painless. I say “our acupuncture” doesn’t hurt because there are some techniques used by some practitioners that are somewhat uncomfortable. We use the painless approach exclusively.
Yes, acupuncture works. It actually works for a surprisingly wide range of conditions. Obviously there are exceptions. It doesn’t help every imaginable condition. For conditions where it usually does work, there are individuals for whom it will not be helpful. But our experience has been excellent for a wide range of painful conditions, as well as other conditions such as allergies, neuralgia, anxiety, hormonal and neurological conditions. I can’t list all the possible conditions here but it is surprising.
Research into how acupuncture works has revealed many surprises.
Years ago, the researchers went into the lab thinking they were trying to find a single mechanism of action (MOA) of acupuncture. Now it is widely recognized that acupuncture has a profoundly varied set of effects on human neurological and physiological processes. The question of how acupuncture works has become substantially more complex.
Acupuncture is known to have an astonishingly wide range of effects on a very divergent group of tissues in the body.
Immediately in the area of the needle insertions, the treatment affects the local tissue inflammation response. In my own office, I have seen skin and muscle injuries that have been resistant to normal healing respond almost immediately.
One patient who had a chronically inflamed, indented lesion that had been present on her leg for months returned to normal within weeks. She had tried several doctors, treatments and medical approaches with no benefit. It appears that acupuncture initiated a renewed healing response, as if the treatment had reset the healing cascade in the same way restarting a computer often restores normal operation.
In other cases, patients with abnormal amounts of pain have found that acupuncture seems to somehow restore normal pain thresholds. For these patients, things an average person would not sense as painful caused very disturbing levels of pain. After a series of acupuncture treatments these patients saw their sensitivity to pain return to normal.
For some patients, acupuncture has been successful in restoring normal hormone or digestive function. Patients with hot flashes, poor digestion and other issues have responded very well.
All these varied conditions would seem to require uniquely different mechanisms of action. Yet one common denominator often seen is dysfunction of the area of the central neurological system known as the midbrain. It has been demonstrated by modern MRI imaging that acupuncture actively modulates the function of the midbrain. Perhaps this is the key to the success of acupuncture in such a wide array of conditions.
