Pain can affect almost every system in the body and develops from many sources. It can occur from a chronic immune disorder, after an infection, from a physical injury, or from emotional stress. Often, pain stays around a long time after an injury has healed. Chinese medicine such as acupuncture in San Diego, Ca addresses pain by helping the body heal itself. It not only treats symptoms, like taking a painkiller, but also corrects imbalances in the body, thereby allowing the body to heal itself.

Acupuncture is a main therapy within Chinese medicine. I like to think that acupuncture reprograms the body to the health; it is like a reset switch that reminds the body what it should be doing.

Recently, several scientific studies have attempted to figure out what exactly this healing process is. To explain a few of the concepts, I’ll use my back pain as an example. Although I feel the pain in my back, the perception of pain is created in the brain. Acupuncture works not only to heal the pain locally, in my back, but also in my brain. Unlike other approaches, acupuncture treats both sources of the pain.

Often, the acupuncture itself focuses on the location of the pain. In my case, it was the lower back. The fibroblasts, the cells of the connective tissue in the area, actually grab onto the needle. The ends of the cells then wrap themselves around the needle. Then the cells begin to change shape and rearrange their own support system, probably working to correct injuries. This is also a method for cells to communicate with one another, so one cell can broadcast messages of self-healing to other cells in the tissue. In addition, the nucleus begins to expand, which signals the first stages of gene expression to repair the cell and the tissue around it.

The phenomenon in which the body grabs onto the needle has been known to Chinese medicine physicians for thousands of years and is described as “getting the qi”.