Welcome back to ThreeSpires Physiotherapy's blog: In keeping with my new resolution to be more active with the blogging, I thought I would do a series (well at least 2 or 3 articles) about acupuncture and dry needling. Here at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy we have recently started offering acupuncture and dry needling/trigger point needling as part of our home visit treatments in Lichfield and surrounding areas, so I thought it could be a nice idea to look over what acupuncture is, some of the history surrounding it and look at the research about its effectiveness and mechanisms of action.

 I guess the first and most logical point to start is to look at what acupuncture is and what types there are, for anyone paying attention you will have noticed that I have also mentioned dry needling/trigger point needling and may well be wondering what that is and how it differs from traditional acupuncture. Well I will come to that but first we need to briefly look at what acupuncture is and what it involves.

 Clearly (from the picture above) acupuncture involves the insertion of thin needles (approximately 0.25mm thick - much thinner than you typical injection needle) into various points in the body. It is a key component of traditional chinese medicine (TCM) and has been in use in varying manners for at least 2,000 years. In the 20th Century acupuncture was revived and promoted heavily as a part of TCM at the instruction of Chairman Mao and since then has become widely used in the West. The points in the body used for acupuncture lie along key meridians (pathways) along the body and relate to the philosophy of TCM, which is complex and very much beyond the scope of this series of blog posts. Along these meridians are located key acupuncture points into which needles are inserted, a key component of the needling according to TCM is the achievement of De-Qi which many people would decsribe as a feeling of localised warmth/ numbness at the needle site. There are 12 major meridians all with prosaic names mostly relating to key body parts:  

• Lung meridian
• Large intestine meridian
•  Spleen meridian
• Stomach meridian
• Heart meridian
• Small intestine meridian
• Bladder meridian
• Kidney meridian
• Pericardium meridian
• Triple Heater/Energiser meridian
• Liver meridian
• Gallbladder meridian

 So... hopefully that is all clear now! No?? Well basically to summarise there are a series of lines (meridians) up and down the body that have various acupuncture points along them. For example the Large intestine meridian runs down the outside of the arm and down to the hand, a key and powerful point of this meridian is large intestine 4 (Li4) which is easily found by pinching the web space in between your thumb and forefinger. This is often tender or painful to pinch and is commonly used as an acupressure point . Another key point is pericardium 6 which lies on the forearm about 2/3rds of the way to the wrist and is the point used by those bracelets which aim to reduce sea sickness.

I guess, 2 key questions to answer over the next few blogs are: firstly what mechanisms are thought to be at work here i.e. how might it be working? Secondly does it actually work and what does the evidence say? The second of these questions will be imposible to answer conclusively and is topic of much debate.

Okay, I think we shall leave it there for now. For those of you who haven't come across this blog before we are a home visit physiotherapy service operating across Lichfield and surrounding areas such as Burntwood, Whittington and Shenstone. We provide a variety of services to patients in Lichfield such as back pain relief, treatment for sciatica, post-operative rehabilitation following knee replacements, hip replacements and joint surgeries. If you live in or around Lichfield and need home visit physiotherapy then please get in touch our phone number is 0788 428 1623 and the email is enquiries@threespiresphysiotherapy.co.uk.