Acupuncture is not a new way of treating pain, as man has been using that ancient form of Chinese medicine for more than two hundred years. However, these days it has become a renowned way of treating pain not only in China, but in many other parts of the world as well. The basics of this treatment suggest that an energy known as chi or qi flows in the body beside meridians that serves as pathways in the body. Mostly people experience pain or other illnesses when the flow of this energy gets disturbed and this disturbed flow of energy can be corrected by using acupuncture.

Acupuncture proves very useful when it is used with other treatments.

Acupuncture is considered a safe method of treating pain, as there isn’t any known risk associated to this sort of treatment. But you must get this treatment from a reputable acupuncturist who uses sterilized needles and dispose them after one time use. The needles that are used in the treatment must also be FDA approved.When acupuncture is used to treat pain, the patient has to undergo a treatment session in which one to twenty needles are inserted in different parts of his/her body. In some cases the needles simply penetrate just beneath the skin, while in some other cases they may penetrate the fat and muscle as well.  When these needles are inserted once, they can be left in any part of the body from fifteen to thirty minutes. The places of these needles can also be changed.

The good thing about this treatment is that it doesn’t cause any pain itself, contrarily, it alleviates pain and the patients feel so much relaxed as they may drop off to sleep during the treatment. The treatment also offers an enervating experience to the patient.

Under this treatment, the electromagnetic signals are relayed much faster than in normal conditions and it increases the flow of pain reliving natural chemicals to those areas that have a lot of pain because of injury and because of this very reason acupuncture and pain are considered well suited for each other. Acupuncture has proved a helpful treatment in different pains like chronic headaches, neck pain due to whiplash, chronic abdominal pains, fibromyalgia and knee and hip pain as a result of arthritis.

In this treatment, the nerve fiber gets simulated and delivers a nerve impulse to the spinal cord when a needle is inserted into an acupuncture point and this becomes the cause of the release of brain chemicals like dynorphin and enkephalin that block the coming pain signals. Some studies show that the treatment can also become the cause to stimulate the pituitary and hypothalamus gland that improve the therapeutic effects of the treatment on the body.

This method of treatment has shown high success rates in patients with stroke, paralysis, headache, low back pain, tennis elbow, addiction, asthma, myofascial pain and carpal tunnel syndrome. In all these treatments, the patient is normally given maximum 12 treatments during one or two weeks.