Health Brief

NEW STUDY PROVES WHAT CHINESE DOCTORS HAVE KNOWN ALL ALONG: "ACUPUNCTURE HELPS RESOLVE PAIN!"

Full Library

To find out whether or not Acupuncture helped people with their many varieties of aches and pains, up to now you'd have to ask those who have received the treatment or the practitioners who administered it. Now there's a new study that provides analytical support for this anecdotal information.

A new study has revealed that Acupuncture can turn off parts of the brain involved with pain. The study, carried out on a set of volunteers by scientists at Hull York Medical School as part of a new BBC TV series called Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, found that an Acupuncture technique using deep needling led to the deactivation of part of the brain's limbic system, which helps the body to be conscious of pain.

The study compared a shallow form of needling with deeper needling of points on the back of the hand. Two forms of Acupuncture were used on separate sets of volunteers. When deeper needling was done, a measurable deactivation in the brain's limbic system was found in the brain scan images of the subjects used.

"The particular area of the brain that MRI shows deactivation during Acupuncture helps someone decide whether something is painful or not. So it could be that Acupuncture in some ways changes a person's pain threshold," Sykes added.

"I'm just thrilled that we managed to do a real scientific experiment, shaped and run by scientists and acupuncturists together, where we found something quite unexpected — that Acupuncture is having a measurable effect on the brain," said Professor Sykes.

Full Library

SOURCE: http://www.ivy-rose.co.uk/Health/show_di.php?id=819