The Needles Communicate (Part 2)

Acupuncture is considered a form of bodywork that works with energy. For some illnesses the body may need new energy to heal. For other illnesses the body may need energy to be released, or simply to move. Along with influencing the body’s energy, however, it may be that acupuncture treatments speak directly to the brain and supply it with another form of medicine, that is, with information that it needs to properly coordinate a healing response to an illness or injury. Information is not usually regarded as medicine, but I will try to explain how it can serve as such.

There are some common illnesses today, such as various inflammatory conditions, autoimmune diseases and stress disorders, in which the body’s own healing mechanism seems to have turned against itself. Allergies, asthma and rheumatic arthritis are among a long list of conditions which are recognized today as being caused not by some outside pathogen but by an immune response that seems to have gone off track. Rather than protecting the body, the immune system in such cases seems to be making the person sick. 

What could be going on in such illnesses? How is it that the brain’s picture of the body could become so distorted that it would direct one part of the body to attack another part? Modern medicine typically treats such diseases with medications that suppress immune functioning, as if the brain has lost the intelligence to coordinate an immune response on its own. These medications don’t treat the root of the disease but generally slow its progress and decrease the severity of its symptoms. 

Perhaps in addition to medication, what the body really needs in such cases is information. The brain may need to become informed that the part of the body that the immune system is attacking is related to the part it is trying to protect. It is a mystery why the brain would be lacking this information, but presumably if there was a way to provide it with this information, it would begin to take steps to correct the problem on its own. 

I’m not suggesting that acupuncture alone be used to treat serious cases of autoimmune disease, but it seems to me that the possibilities that acupuncture presents should not be dismissed too quickly by modern medicine. In my own clinical experience I have treated many people suffering from seasonal allergies, food sensitivities, asthma and various chronic inflammatory conditions with a high rate of success, indicating to me that indeed acupuncture can ‘speak to the brain’ and influence the way the body coordinates its immune functioning.