Acupuncture & Pain Perception
ACUPUNCTURE LESSENS PERCEPTION OF PAIN
Previously, it 
has been suggested that acupuncture reduces pain, although it has seldom been studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Now, such a study suggests that acupuncture can affect the experience of pain in two ways:
1.) it reduces the incoming pain signal itself; and
2.) it lowers activity in brain areas that govern patients’ expectations of pain.
(A functional MRI measures the tiny metabolic changes that take place in an active part of the brain, while a patient performs a task or is exposed to a specific external stimulus.) At first, eighteen healthy volunteers underwent fMRI while an electrical pain stimulus was attached to the left ankle. Then, acupuncture needles were placed at three places on the right side: between the toes, below the knee and near the thumb, after which the same electrical pain currents were directed at the left ankle. Researchers compared the fMRI imaging results without acupuncture to those with acupuncture; and detected changes in brain areas linked to both pain expectation and sensation. This study was presented November 30, 2010 at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago but has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Acupuncture Helps Heart Failure Patients
Acupuncture helps heart failure patients.
Although exercise can be beneficial to patients with heart failure, exercising is a problem because shortness of breath and fatigue – which make vigorous or longer-term exercise difficult – are, in themselves, symptoms of heart failure.
But acupuncture can increase exercise tolerance.
The needles do not increase heart function; but they appear to boost skeletal muscle strength and thus, increase the distance patients can walk. Although heart disease is seen as a pump problem, it also involves inflammation and an imbalance in nerve transmitter substances; acupuncture seems to bring these systems back into balance.
A study found that focusing on acupuncture points associated in Traditional Chinese Medicine with muscle strength and inflammation allowed patients to walk further and get more exercise. The study appeared in the June 15, 2010 issue of the journal Heart and can be read online with subscription to the journal here: http://bit.ly/dlgsR7.
Acupuncture Works – Confirmed by Science
Acupuncture Increases Adenosine
Clarifying how acupuncture may work to reduce pain, a study shows that, at the site applied, acupuncture needles increase levels of a molecule called adenosine, a natural compound that regulates sleep, anti-inflammatory responses – and painkilling.
Research previously showed an increase in brain-signaling and painkilling endorphins when the central nervous system is affected by acupuncture. But this study found that stimulation of nerve endings not linked to the brain and spinal cord also increase levels of adenosine. Mice bred to have no adenosine received no pain benefit from acupuncture; mice whose adenosine was “turned on” received benefit without acupuncture; and mice with normal adenosine had pain reduced by two thirds while adenosine levels at the needle site jumped 24 times normal levels.
This study will be published in a future issue of Nature Neuroscience by July 2010 issue and full details will be available with subscription. You can read the full-text study released May 30 without cost at: http://bit.ly/dogW0U.
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