To Acu or not to Puncture?

Abstract

Alexandros Senarelis-Sinaris

Even though acupuncture and its reputed role in Traditional Chinese Medicine appears as a true value in East & West, from heart’s “perspective” it feels really as a false value. Acupuncture behaves as a stressor. Its way of approaching the skin, and especially the sensitive mechanoreceptors, fits more in challenging the nociceptors (pain receptors), rather than any other kind of basic skin receptors, such as haptic-stretch-pressure & vibration. This kindling mechanism, this external source of algorithmical conglomerative stress onto the skin, and consequently to other biological systems of the organism which are connected/entangled with it from the embryological phase of the three germ layers, has inevitably a direct link with the autonomic nervous system; the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis with cortisol production, and the sympathoadrenal medullary (SAM) axis which activate the sympathetic nervous system, which dedicates energy to more relevant bodily systems to acute adaptation to stress. The above-mentioned neurobiological mechanisms are the basic major systems that respond to stress, and by extension they can affect through it (stress caused by acupuncture) the immune system.

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