First Acupuncture relieves muscular spasms. Many people experience pain due to some sort of physical trauma causing muscle spasms. When a person has a trauma the body first becomes stressed to address the immediate pain and trauma. It “splints” or protects itself by triggering stress and inflammatory responses. This is a normal protective response. The problem comes when the response becomes chronic or uncontrolled. When this happens you have more constant or chronic pain. This is when acupuncture can do so much to help to release the spasms and help relieve the inflammation. When there is trauma acupuncture has the ability to help the body heal faster by enhancing the body’s parasympathetic response, it’s own healing mechanisms.
Another way that Acupuncture helps is by looking at the body with the yin/yang perspective. What this means when it comes to pain is that perhaps the pain is a result of something that is triggered somewhere else. In modern terminology, this is the understanding of how agonist/antagonist muscle groups works. For example, to treat low back pain one must treat the front hip flexors that are on the front of the body. Acupuncture and Oriental medicine is considered a whole-systems medicine, where one part cannot be separated from the other parts, and when one system is out of balance the whole system is effected.
These are two simple examples of how Acupuncture can help back pain