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Ancient Remedies for Modern Lives
By David Lee, Ph.D. in Oriental Medicine

Acupuncture is continuing to gain popularity and many like to know how acupuncture works, really. People are curious to know how it works because the therapeutic results are good, and acupuncture is often the treatment of choice. Can anyone give a clear, concise, straight forward answer in plain English?

David Lee

David Lee, PhD, LAc

The answer is a definite “no”. And there may not be a satisfactory answer any time soon nor in your lifetime. Let me drive you up the wall a little bit higher with this answer: A clear answer is that there is no clear answer. And this is the reason for such effectiveness of acupuncture.

The following are what I categorize as the best explanation, better explanation, and good explanation. They are my view as an acupuncturist. Explaining how the acupuncture works is up for grabs within reasonable perspectives. Think, as an example, that you have a box in your hands with an object inside the box. You can use all your senses but cannot open it or peer inside it. You can shake it, listen to it, and smell it without truly knowing the identity of the object. But you know it exists, because the results confirm its existence.

Best Explanation – Eastern Medical Philosophy

Acupuncture points are aggregated energy points on the body that represent the yin and yang distribution of the body. Each point has its own levels of the yin, yang, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water energies. The job of an acupuncturist is to recognize the nature of the acupuncture points and the needs of the patient. When the practitioner matches both together, healing takes place. Acupuncture is all about adjusting the yin, yang, and five elements of the body by stimulating the right points. Correct selection and manipulation of these points restore the natural homeostasis in the body and therefore the body is free to heal itself.

Better Explanation- Analogies

Acupuncture points are switches, buttons, reflexive, or trigger points on a continuum of pathways. When they are properly stimulated, then it leads to a series of events that help the body to heal. The body’s physiology normalizes when it recognizes the instruction to correct itself. These acupuncture points do not make the body improve, but start a domino effect that causes a body to regulate itself.

Take a light switch, as an example. Flickering it on or off does not require a lot of energy. But turning it on causes the whole room to brighten. Or take an example of buttons on a keyboard or the click on a mouse. When you give it correct instruction, the software displays on the screen its response from the motherboard. The whole setup of the system is such that a slight change at the right places makes a drastic and favorable change.

Good Explanation- Western Scientific Mechanism

Scientists can measure the healing response at the physiological levels in the chemical and cellular changes when an acupuncture point is stimulated. The results are local in the flesh or distal in the organs, such as the liver. The acupuncture points seem to have higher electrical or chemical activity than other points on the body but there are also many other points that do not have correlation with blood vessels, lymph, nervous system, or connective tissue. Whether the acupuncture meridian system is independent from the rest of the other systems or it follows the nervous system path is yet to be determined.

Each person can determine which explanation makes the most sense. Acupuncture works with the fundamental concept of yin, yang, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. Western science has a fundamental component that makes up the universe, which are gravity, electro-magnetism, strong force, and weak force. Notice the similarity: energetic concepts. Energetic concepts have always had a component of mystery to it. So to me, the best answer is the energetic explanation on an energetic point on the body – through Eastern medical philosophy.

David Lee, PhD, LAc, is an Emperor’s College alumnus (1999) and a licensed acupuncturist and herbologist. He has been in practice since 2000 in the Conejo Valley. www.davidleeacupuncture.com