I lie down on the table, sighing in grateful anticipation as my longtime acupuncturist, Jen Forrest Evans, goes to work. Some days, she gently pokes needles into my chronically tight lower back. Other days, she focuses on my pesky sinuses. Still other days - the best ones - the goal is a general tuneup of my qi (pronounced "chee"), the Chinese term for vital (and sometimes, not vital enough) energy.
This ancient Chinese technique of sticking needles into the skin to relieve pain, nausea and many other ills never fails to make me feel better - more mellow and energized.
I used to think this lovely state was mostly because of the placebo effect. But a growing body of evidence - brain scans, ultrasound and other techniques - now shows that acupuncture triggers direct, measurable effects on the body, including, perhaps, activation of precisely the regions of the brain that would be predicted by ancient Chinese theory.
This is potentially good news for millions of Americans now scrambling for pain relief in the wake of conflicting government recommendations on painkillers Vioxx and Celebrex.
At the University of California, Irvine, researchers have shown that when a needle is placed in a point on the side of the foot that Chinese theorists associate with vision, sure enough, the visual cortex in the brain "lights up" during fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging scans, though the cause and effect are not totally clear.
Neuroscientist Seung-Schik Yoo at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has shown that when a needle is placed in a point called pericardium 6 on the wrist, known in Chinese medicine as a sensitive point for nausea, the part of the brain that controls the vestibular system (which affects balance and nausea) lights up on scans.
While much about acupuncture remains mysterious, at least to Westerners, a great deal is becoming clearer, thanks to an explosion of studies using Western scientific techniques.
"The quality and amount of research being conducted now on acupuncture is improving greatly," said Peter Wayne, director of research at the New England School of Acupuncture, which has received $3.2 million in federal grants to study acupuncture on women undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, on teenagers with endometriosis, and on the accuracy of acupuncturists in diagnosing disease.
