Is acupuncture scientific? What is its connection with the human body’s neural mechanism?

Have you ever had acupuncture? People who have never had it feel painful just thinking about it, but people who have had it say it is magical. Why does acupuncture have anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects? What is the scientific basis behind this?

Hello everyone, I am Xiao Wei who studies science in depth. Today we are going to talk about what acupuncture is and how it relates to the human nervous system.

Many people have heard of acupuncture, but not all have tried it. It is a very important part of traditional Chinese medicine and has a long history. The earliest acupuncture therapy can be traced back to the Neolithic Age, about 7,000 to 8,000 to 4,000 years ago.

The original acupuncture needles were made of stone, called "Bian stone". Acupuncture therapy first appeared in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine around 100 BC.

Doctors at that time found that acupuncture was useful in treating diseases, so they began to gradually use and promote it. During the long process of development, many traditional medical works emerged.

According to the development history of acupuncture, we can divide it into the Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Republic of China Period and the New China.

Among them, Yang Jizuo, a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, conducted extensive collection and compilation of acupuncture documents of his predecessors and compiled many works of acupuncture documents from past dynasties. This is the "Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion", which forms the basis of modern acupuncture.

Although acupuncture can be regarded as a gem in traditional Chinese medicine, the scientific nature of this therapy has always been controversial. Even many Chinese scholars do not believe in it, let alone its application in the international medical field.

However, with the development of modern medicine, scientists have gradually become more interested in acupuncture. As early as the 1970s, scientists discovered that acupuncture points have a certain scientific basis.

In 1979, researchers stimulated various skin areas in rats and found that it affected the rats' nerve reflexes and gastric motility.

In 2014, another group of scientists found that stimulating acupuncture points in mice had physiological effects. They used electroacupuncture to stimulate a specific acupuncture point, ST36, on the mice's bodies, and found that it activated the mice's vagus nerve system and relieved inflammation.

Please note that the specific site we mentioned here is actually the "Zusanli" acupoint in traditional Chinese medicine.

Since then, another team, led by neuroscientist Ma Qiufu, who has just joined Westlake University, has also conducted in-depth research. In 2020, they found that stimulating the ST25 and ST36 acupoints of mice can respond to inflammation. These two acupoints correspond to the "Tianshu" and "Zusanli" acupoints in traditional medicine.

So far, scientists have proved to some extent that acupoints exist. So why can stimulating acupoints induce physiological changes? What is the principle behind this?

In order to explore the mechanism behind acupuncture, the researchers fluorescently marked the sensory neurons on the back of mice, and then performed acupuncture and neuron knockout operations. They found that the effect of acupuncture was related to the activation of sensory neurons in this area, which in turn activated the vagus nerve-adrenal anti-inflammatory pathway, thereby achieving the purpose of treating the disease.

What’s amazing is that the researchers can also predict the anti-inflammatory effect of acupuncture at different acupoints in mice based on the distribution of this type of nerves.

Scientists not only figured out the neurological mechanism behind acupuncture, but also published a paper in the top journal Nature.

Of course, after the publication of this study, the public was talking about it. It is worth mentioning that there are some differences between traditional acupuncture and acupuncture. Acupuncture is a general term for acupuncture therapy and moxibustion therapy. Acupuncture has many quantitative indicators, but the results of this study have opened a door for acupuncture to move from traditional medicine to modern medicine.

Just when the Chinese scientific research community was skeptical about the efficacy of acupuncture, the United States also noticed this track and began to make efforts secretly. In October 2016, the National Institutes of Health launched a research program called stimulating peripheral activity to relieve condition (SPARC).

The name of this project may seem complicated, but the core is actually very clear - to study whether nerve stimulation can reduce inflammation. This is almost consistent with the neuroanatomical mechanism related to acupuncture points that we just talked about.

After learning about this plan, Chinese scientists slapped their thighs and thought, isn't this acupuncture? Why did our traditional medicine still get ahead of the United States? While regretting, they also reflected. The "take-it-as-it-is" approach of Western medicine in this SPARC plan has both "inheritance" and innovation, which is worth deep thought for Chinese acupuncture researchers.

It is based on traditional Chinese medicine and is an innovative systematic study based on Western medical logical thinking and medical practice. It can be seen that the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine is very important, and only in this way can it go international.

Back to acupuncture. How to systematically explore the intrinsic connection between acupuncture, acupoints and the nervous system, and clarify the neuroanatomical mechanism behind acupuncture, may be the only way for acupuncture to be "modernized". We also hope that acupuncture treatment will become more and more scientific in the future and play a greater role on the international medical stage.

This article is a work supported by Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

Team Name: Deep Science

Reviewer: Qin Lina

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.