This new scientific discovery may explain why acupuncture works.

This new scientific discovery may explain why acupuncture works.

If you have ever had acupuncture performed on you, you may have experienced relief of pain or another systemic symptom by having the proper meridian treated. Acupuncturists use needles but may also use electrical stimulation to enhance the effect of the treatment.

Sham acupuncture when tested against treating real acupuncture points has been shown not to have the same therapeutic effect.

Recently, a fluid filled interstitium between our skin and our muscles, had been described in a number of articles promoted as a previously undiscovered organ(1), we were unable to see before because it had to be examined in live tissue may be how lymph and other body tissues move about in the body as well as certain cancers.

This article featured in the Cut suggests that the interstitium may actually be part of why acupuncture works.

Other research has suggested that acupuncture points may be part of a neurological network in the myofascia(2) which is now being recognized as an important organ that controls movement, acts as an exoskeleton and controls muscular firing patterns.

Check out the article here

Do We Finally Understand How Acupuncture Works?
By Katie Heaney

That acupuncture works to relieve certain conditions (particularly chronic pain) is well-documented, and largely undisputed, but exactly how it works has long remained something of a mystery. Skeptics tend to attribute its efficacy to the placebo effect, essentially arguing that patients who receive the treatment may feel less pain as a result, but only because they expect to. Others, especially those specializing in integrative medicine, say there’s a lot more going on than mere placebo effect — and a new study published in Scientific Reports might go a long way toward explaining how that’s possible.

The research, authored in part by Neil Theise, a clinician and professor of pathology at NYU Langone Health, argues that the interstitium, a fluid-filled space between our skin and our muscles, should be considered an organ unto itself — and, as the estimated volume of this space is 20 percent of the fluid volume of the body, says Theise, the largest organ in the body, at that. (You’ve probably seen the study making the rounds under slightly terrifying headlines about the discovery of a brand-new human organ.) Previously, the medical

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1. Petros C. Benias, Rebecca G. Wells, Bridget Sackey-Aboagye, Heather Klavan, Jason Reidy, Darren Buonocore, Markus Miranda, Susan Kornacki, Michael Wayne, David L. Carr-Locke & Neil D. Theise, Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 4947 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41598-018-23062-6

2 Langevin HM, Yandow JA. Relationship of Acupuncture Points and Meridians to Connective Tissue Planes. Anat Rec. 2002 Dec 15;269(6):257-65.