Biophysical Modeling of the Physiology of Acupuncture

Abstract

It has been more than two decades since reports of acupuncture anesthesia used during surgery in China captured the Western imagination. Since then, some 4000 publications on the topic of acupuncture have been listed in the MEDLINE database. Basic research indicates that acupuncture stimulates neural pathways, and ultimately modulates a variety of neurotransmitter systems, particularly the opioid (endorphin) systems. Clinical research has produced more ambiguous results, suggesting that while acupuncture may have useful effects, they are generally mild. Taken as a whole, this body of work has failed to convince the general mainstream Western medical community that acupuncture is clinically useful. This situation is partly the product of differences between Eastern (prescientific philosophy-based) and Westem (nonholistic mechanistic-based) understandings of acupuncture, which on careful examination, are largely illusory. More promising clinical applications may lie in areas that Western medicine does not c...