American patients would not spend $500 million a year on acupuncture,
mostly from their own pockets, unless they believed that it worked. Now the procedure
has got the endorsement of a panel of scientists convened by the National Institutes
of Health who judged it effective in controlling nausea from pregnancy and chemotherapy
as well as pain after dental surgery. Whether it works for other ailments, such as
lower back pain, is less certain.
The 2,500-year-old Chinese therapy involves inserting extremely fine needles into
the body at specific points. It is based on the classic Chinese concept of regulating
the flow of bodily energy, or qi (pronounced chee), an idea unknown to Western science.
Persuading the mainstream medical community to prescribe acupuncture will take more
than showing that it works. There must also be explanations why it works that are
compatible with the Western biomedical understanding of the body. When the Chinese
explain acupuncture as unblock-ing a qi channel, it sounds like quackery. But viewthe
procedure through the lens of Western science using Western terminology, and acupuncture
can begin to sound as rational as acetaminophen.
Many studies have shown that acupuncture can cause biological responses. |
There is considerable evidence that pain-suppressing endorphins
are released during acupuncture. Changes in the secretion of neurotransmitters and
hormones have been documented. Acupuncture may stimulate the hypothalamus and the
pituitary gland, though it is unclear how those changes lead to therapeutic effects. There is
even evidence that acupuncture affects immune responses.
Why these mechanisms are triggered remains unexplained. But studying the acupuncture
phenomenon could lead researchers to a better understanding of the mysteries of the
pathways in human physiology. What they find, recast into modern concepts, the Chinese
long ago named qi. |
