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Acupuncture and Electricity

Acupuncture has been shown to have great success in treating pain, stress, and a number of diseases.  Acupuncture has a number of different techniques, and one of them is to apply a very low-level electric charge to the needle.  This particular technique is creating interest in a field that was started in America in the 1930s and 1940s, but lost support soon afterward.  This field is how to use low levels of electricity as a tool for medical therapy. 

The initial discovery of acupuncture points on the body was by centuries of observation of the tender spots on the skin when a patient had certain symptoms.  These acupuncture points can now be discovered and duplicated by scientists. They can find these same acupuncture points (given in any standard diagram) by using electrical apparatus.  Scientists can also use infrared photography to find the temperature differences between these acupuncture points and the surrounding skin.   So the acupuncture points have a different electrical behavior than the surrounding cells when the patient suffers from the associated symptom.

Several claims for acupuncture seem to get some support from other research using electricity.  One scientist, Becker, has had tissue regrown by animals when he applied a low-level electric current to the site of the tissue.  Even heart tissue has been restored without any scarring.   Low level electric pulses have also been used to make bone fractures heal significantly faster than fractures left to heal on their own.

How do these two previous experience relate to the fundamentals of acupuncture?  The basis of acupuncture is the correct distribution and flow of energy throughout the body.  When energy is depleted, regrowth and stimulation and vitality do not occur.  An acupuncture treatment restores the energy needed to a specific area.  This research (especially the bone research) supports the claim that acupuncture sessions are of significant benefit for those with broken arms or other broken bones in the feet, ankles, and wrists, or other locations. Acupuncture has been known as an effective treatment for patients with heart palpitations, and the EKG results scientifically support that claim.  Patients that are attached to an EKG machine and undergo an acupuncture treatment show a difference in the structure of the heartbeat, which is controlled by electric impulses from the nerves. 

When an acupuncture needle is inserted into the skin, there is an electrical activity at that point, since the cells at that point are disturbed, and cells by their structure have various electrical charges within them.  This is also shown by such techniques as Kirlian photography, where the photograph after a needle is inserted has a very different energy shape than before the needle insertion.  

This exploration of the interaction between electricity and acupuncture has come back to expand the techniques used in acupuncture.  The most basic technique for an acupuncture treatment is to use needles inserted into the skin of the patient.  The location of the insertion, its depth and technique, bring about the results from the treatment.  An additional technique is the application of heat, or moxa, which we will not go into.  A third addition may be the use of herbs, either at the point of insertion, or given to the patient separately.  A technique directly related to the above research, and also harkening back to the experiments of the 1930s and 1940s, is to affect the acupuncture points by a low voltage electric current.  This is used in place of the needle.  All these results and new ideas make research in acupuncture an exciting field to be working in and reading about.