Acupuncture changes the way you perceive pain

Did you always believe that the acupuncture Was it another form of placebo? It's time to update your knowledge of oriental medicine New studies indicate that acupuncture has beneficial effects on your way of perceiving and process the pain, publish the portal TIME Healthland.

Through magnetic resonance it was studied how acupuncture can modulate the perception of pain in the brain. To identify the brain activity The images of the resonance were analyzed before and during the practice of inserting needles on specific points of the body.

Each of the 18 volunteers submitted to the MRI scanner was given a small electric stimulus on his left ankle to generate pain. The needles of acupuncture were inserted on 3 points on the right side that corresponded to areas that are known to modulate ankle pain and the scan was repeated.

When we observed the comparison of the images taken before and after the acupuncture, it was found that the areas activated during the Pain stimulation , were calm when the needles were applied. This suggests that acupuncture does produce a change in the way that the brain It perceives and processes pain, indicates the publication.

Dr. Nina Theyson, of the University Hospital in Essen in Germany, warns that it is still too early to have conclusions about how the acupuncture technique works. "We do not know exactly what is happening, but we can say that all the activated brain regions showed a decrease in the perception of pain under the effect of acupuncture "said the researcher.

This discovery is important because thanks to the regions identified by the magnetic resonances, it will be possible to study and search for better treatments against pain.  


Video Medicine: Opening the Medicine Box in the Mind: The Psychology of Pain (March 2024).