Let me introduce you to a great blogger who writes very helpful posts. Lynn Jaffee is a licensed acupuncturist and author. I have followed many of her posts on Acupuncture Health Insights. I am in strong agreement with many of her explanations and ways of thinking about Chinese Medicine.  This particular post – Why Acupuncture Works For Stress – provides a clear explanation of the effectiveness of acupuncture for stress relief.

Here’s a taste – “Before trying acupuncture, especially for something like stress, most people want to know exactly how some needles stuck in your body can actually help them feel less stressed out and better able to cope.  This is a fair question, and can be answered on a couple of levels.

First, according to Chinese medicine, stress causes your energy to become blocked.  While you may think that talking about energy is the stuff of mood rings, Earth shoes, and beaded curtains, remember that every cell in your body produces energy.  Adherents to Chinese medicine simply believe that this energy moves throughout your body in pathways.  When you become ill or have uncomfortable symptoms, it’s because your energy is either not flowing smoothly or it has become depleted.  In the case of stress, you feel seriously uptight and tense, and this is because your energy has become blocked.”

“From a Western biomedical standpoint, research indicates that acupuncture affects your brain chemistry in a positive way.  Researchers have found that one benefit of acupuncture is that it raises the level of endorphins, those feel-good chemicals, in your brain.  This explains the mellow feeling many patients experience after an acupuncture treatment.  The feeling can last for hours, and the effect of a treatment may last days or even weeks.  Frequently, my patients tell me that after their treatment, the people, events, or circumstances that normally put them over the top just don’t seem to matter that much.”

*You can read the rest here