Hacking Your Nervous System For Health & Healing

Modern scientists are continuing to “discover” clues about how our bodies actually work that the ancient Chinese have known for centuries. Although acupuncture repeatedly achieves great clinical results in the treatment of a variety of conditions, such as pain, acupuncture for weight loss, nausea, infertility, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, migraine headaches, menopausal hot flashes, and even psycho-emotional illness, many doctors and scientists remain skeptical of acupuncture’s efficacy because they do not understand how it works.

One major problem in finding an explanation for how acupuncture works was the prevailing Western scientific belief that the body is simply just a collection of anatomical structures and biochemical reactions that work mostly independent from each other. Even as recently as 1998, there was scientific consensus that the nervous system and the immune system work independently from each other and don’t have any direct connection. According to that rationale, stimulating the nervous system with acupuncture should not affect the immune system, digestive system, or any other system of the body except for the nervous system. (Thus, Western scientists could explain how acupuncture may be able to alleviate pain, but any other healing would likely just be the result of the placebo effect.)

But in 1998, a neuroscientist by the name of Kevin Tracey performed a surgery on a rat that showed how the nervous system can be hacked to promote health and healing in other systems of the body. He stimulated the vagus nerve (located behind the carotid artery in the neck) of his rat “patient” and then injected the rat with an inflammatory agent called Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF). Under normal conditions, tumor necrosis factor causes inflammation and illness in the body. However, the rat did not experience any inflammation because prior to receiving the TNF he received electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve. The experiment shows that the nervous system and immune system are connected, and our bodies are indeed electric -- not just biochemical.

Most illnesses that plague our modern society -- from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, chronic pain, digestive ailments, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune diseases, to others such as infectious disease and high fevers -- have their roots in inflammation. Chronic inflammation in the body leads to disease states which can vary from person to person based on genetics and environmental input. (One person with chronic inflammation may develop heart disease, while the other will develop diabetes. Some may develop both or some other inflammatory disease.) But if this chronic inflammation can be blocked from traveling throughout the body by “hacking” the nervous system, disease processes can be stopped or reversed. And this is one way of explaining how acupuncture works. Acupuncture in Del Mar, CA is therefore an ancient, safe method for blocking chronic inflammation from progressing and carrying out disease processes. The acupuncture points are electrical conduits that serve to connect the nervous system to the other systems of the body through electrical signals. Tracey believes that a bioelectrical model of healing could replace the chemical pharmaceutical industry in the not so distant future.

 

How Does Acupuncture Relieve Stress?

One of the reasons why acupuncture works so well for such a variety of conditions is that it relieves stress. We all know that chronic stress is the underlying mechanism for nearly all modern disease. But how exactly does it relieve stress?

Anyone who has ever been a “non-believer” in the power of acupuncture to assist the healing process in nearly every kind of health condition imaginable (and then gotten an acupuncture treatment to “prove” it doesn’t work) will attest to the fact that acupuncture’s effects are more than just a placebo. While the modern scientific understanding of “why” acupuncture works has been lagging, most people who have tried acupuncture say that it really does work.

Elite athletes have turned to acupuncture to help them go through intense training regimens without suffering from the typical side effects of overtraining, such as fatigue and injuries. When athletes do get injured or start to feel too fatigued during the post-workout recovery period, they have found that acupuncture helps them get back on track faster than rest alone.

Stressed out executives find relief from insomnia, chronic fatigue, heartburn, irritable bowel syndrome, and mental stress by getting their acupuncture “fix” a few times a month. Some acupuncturists even work full-time doing acupuncture for the workplace, and there are a growing number of spas throughout the world that offer acupuncture alongside other therapies such as massage and aromatherapy. It’s no secret that acupuncture helps relieve stress, regardless of whether it’s of mental or physical origin.

But now science has revealed how, in fact, acupuncture relieves stress. According to a study in the Journal of Endocrinology, acupuncture has a direct effect on the level of stress hormones circulating in the body. The scientists assessed blood levels of hormones secreted by the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands (also referred to as the HPA-axis) with no acupuncture, sham acupuncture, and true acupuncture. These are the hormones commonly referred to as those involved in the “fight or flight” response, as well as a variety of other processes in the body including metabolism, digestion, cardiovascular regulation, and reproductive function. The real acupuncture applied to a single acupuncture point below the knee (known as Zusanli, 3-leg mile, or Stomach 36) blocked the effects of chronic stress and normalized the hormones of the HPA-axis.

This may also explain part of the reason why acupuncture works so well for weight loss. High amounts of the stress hormone cortisol is associated with the accumulation of belly fat and difficulty losing weight. Chronic dieting and over exercising can increase cortisol, which in turn lowers the amount of active thyroid hormone in the body and sabotages your dieting efforts. Bringing cortisol levels back to normal gets you past a weight loss plateau, normalizes active thyroid hormone, and burns belly fat.

Whether you’re going through a stressful life situation, you have a high-stress job, you’re training for a triathlon, or you simply want to stay well and function at your best, getting acupuncture in Del Mar can help you.