Acupuncture induced analgesia

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Acupuncture induced analgesia

• Tao Yang
• UW School of Medicine Dept of pharmacology USA
• TCM college of Guiyang,550002.PR China

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Outline

• Definition of acupuncture
• History of acupuncture
• Types of acupuncture
• Neurotransmitter Theory
• summary

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Definition of acupuncture

• Acupuncture involves stimulation with a needle at
  a specific acupuncture point.
• Acus meaning needle
• Pungare meaing to pierce
• Zhenjiu meaning needle (zhen) and moxabustion
  (jiu)
• Manipulating body balance through regulating flow
  of Qi.

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History of acupuncture

• Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medical
  procedure involving insertion and manipulation of
  needles at any of more than 360 points in the
  human body.
• Acupuncture needles dating from 4,000 years ago
  have been found in China.
• First needles stone
• later bronze, gold, or silver
• today steel.

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Types of Acupuncture

• Traditional acupuncture
• Electrical Acupuncture stimulation
• Auricular acupuncture

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Neurotransmitter Theory

• Acupuncture stimulates nerve fibers in the muscle
  which send impulses to the spinal cord and
  activates spinal cord, midbrain, and
  hypothalamus-pituitary to cause analgesia.

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• Neurotransmitters implicated include
• enkephalin, dynorphin, GABA, monamines,
  serotonin, and norepinephrine,which have been
  shown to be involved in acupuncture analgesia

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• The needles may trigger the release of
  endorphins, which inhibit pain signals by
  blocking their pathway through the spinal cord.
• Acupuncture analgesia is at least partly
  reversible by naloxone (an opioid receptor
  antagonist abolished the analgesia obtained with
  acupuncture)

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(No Transcript)
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EA Effect of Increasing Frequency
200 Hz
4 Hz
0.2 Hz
Electrical Acupuncture
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EA Low Frequency Naloxone
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Summary

• Studies have shown that acupuncture can
  facilitate the release of specific
  neurotransmitters in the CNS,
• which elicit Acupuncture analgesia.
• EA in different frequencies applied to certain
  body sites can release different
  neurotransmitters.