Thanks to the research done at Georgetown University Medical Center, we are getting closer to showing acupuncture’s effectiveness on stress.

Ladan Eshevari, Ph.D., a licensed acupuncturist and assistant professor at the university conducted the study. The study focused on the effect of acupuncture on amount of neuropeptide Y (NPY) in blood levels. This neuro-chemical is involved in the sympathetic “fight or flight” response of stress.

They found “NPY levels in the experimental group came down almost to the level of the control group, while the rats that were stressed and not treated with Zuslanli acupuncture had high levels of the protein.”

Read the whole article here

I, for one, would like to see the needle technique applied to the rats… I wonder the parallels of stimulus the rats received compared to scaling up to human levels. Most importantly, I may need to brush up (or learn completely from scratch) on what nerves innervate at ST-35 (acupuncture point tested) in rats compared to ST-35 in humans.

Otherwise, this is a study that I like to see. Now, it brings up the subject of animal testing… I wonder what some of my fellow acupuncturist practitioners think of this… It is animal testing that is trying to prove acupuncture in the treatment of stress (one the the most common things I treat for). I am for it. Any HEY, we are de-stressing those rats! Maybe in the future, acupuncture will be used in all animal testing to calm down the subjects and improve their quality of life for potentially (human) life saving experiments.