How does Acupuncture work?

Acupuncture offers meaningful benefits for your aches and pains. Very thin, single‑use sterile needles are placed into specific areas to send calming signals through your nervous system, helping reduce the “alarm” messages that keep muscles tight and painful. This encourages muscles to relax, improves blood flow, and helps the brain shift out of a sensitized, protective state.

Electroacupuncture adds a gentle electrical pulse to needles, creating rhythmic stimulation that provides deeper relief for chronic tightness, trigger points, and long‑standing pain. A typical session uses 1-5 needles, with a depth from less than half an inch up to 2 inches, depending on the area being treated, and lasts 20-25 minutes, giving your body time to settle and reset. Some patients also benefit from ear seeds — tiny, non‑needle pellets placed on specific points of the ear — which provide gentle, ongoing stimulation between sessions and can help extend pain relief and relaxation.

Is acupuncture safe?

Safety is a major strength of acupuncture: needles are pre‑sterilized, single‑use, and disposed of immediately, and practitioners follow strict hygiene protocols, making infection risk extremely low.  While certain health conditions can be at risk (such as pregnancy or diabetes), the treatment will be modified to ensure your safety.

The benefits of acupuncture for pain are well‑supported by strong research. For example, a large 2018 meta‑analysis published in The Journal of Pain reviewed data from over 20,000 patients and found that acupuncture produced significant, clinically meaningful, and lasting reductions in chronic musculoskeletal pain.

What options are there for acupuncture as part of a massage therapy treatment plan?

In my practice, I offer acupuncture/electroacupuncture therapy at no extra charge, incorporating it as part of your massage therapy treatment, letting the needles do their part while I work on other areas of your body. For example, I may place some needles on your knee/leg/foot for knee pain while I massage your neck and shoulders. Or, if you would like to have it added on for 20 minutes after your massage treatment, and just relax with the needles in place this is an option as well for $35. If you are experiencing pain and would like to have a short term, targeted,  acupuncture massage treatment plan of 2-3 times a week for several weeks, contact me to see if we can schedule accordingly.

A few of the many studies supporting acupuncture:

Acupuncture has strong scientific support for several pain conditions. For chronic low back pain, a large individual‑patient meta‑analysis of more than 20,000 participants found acupuncture produced significant and lasting reductions in pain intensity and disability: PubMed: 30174245 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in Bing)

For TMJ (jaw) pain, randomized controlled trials show acupuncture reduces jaw pain and improves mouth opening more effectively than standard care, with one well‑designed study demonstrating meaningful improvements in both pain and function: PubMed: 25920352 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in Bing)

For tension‑type headaches, a major Cochrane Review analyzing 22 randomized trials found acupuncture significantly reduced headache frequency compared with usual care and even outperformed sham acupuncture: PubMed: 27351677 (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov in Bing)

Together, these studies highlight acupuncture as a safe, evidence‑supported option for reducing musculoskeletal pain and improving quality of life.