How Does Acupuncture Work? The Science Behind East Asian Medicine

It can be tricky to explain what’s happening in the body when we perform an acupuncture treatment. We can explain it from the Chinese Medicine perspective, but that involves a lot of unfamiliar terms, like Qi and Shen and we can end up going down a bit of a rabbit hole, explaining what all the terms are and how they relate to biomedical understanding.

It’s also challenging to explain it from a western medical point of view. There are many clinical studies out there where the researchers are looking at acupuncture’s mechanism of action, or the specific ways acupuncture and herbs exert their clinical effects on the body. It turns out, there are multiple mechanisms of action at work simultaneously, so it can be difficult to limit our explanation to just one thing.

The human body is marvelously, miraculously complex, so offering a clear and concise response to “What is acupuncture doing to my body” is also complex!

Luckily, we have people like David Hastings Lloyd doing some of the heavy lifting for us! If you’re up for geeking out a bit and want to learn about some of the biomedical mechanisms that were at work during your most recent e you’re enjoying your acu-nap, this video is for you!

Curious to experience it yourself? We welcome new patients in Rockville and Silver Spring, Maryland, and welcome patients from the greater Maryland and Washington, DC area.