Insomnia – brain imaging studies show how acupuncture helps

A few weeks ago, I shared with you how brain imaging can help us understand how acupuncture works.  And now I came across a fascinating study about using acupuncture for insomnia and sleep deprivation.

The study, conducted by JiaoTong university in China, focused on just one acupuncture point on the leg that has been shown to help alleviate insomnia. To test if it really made a difference, the researchers used another area on the same leg, only 2 centimetres away from the real acupoint. To further help to understand the effect of acupuncture they scanned people who were not sleep deprived but received the same treatment.

You can see the results on the image above for yourself. The first horizontal row shows the brain of students who received stimulation when they weren’t sleep deprived. The second row is where we can see significant changes to various areas of the brain; this is where real acupuncture was used on the same students after total sleep deprivation for one night. The third row shows sham or fake treatment, where they used exactly the same needle, but on an area away from an acupoint.

The researchers concluded that this difference in brain activation suggests the importance of this specific acupuncture point (known as SP6) in treating sleep deprivation. Thanks to the wonders of FMRI technology, we’re getting closer to unlocking the mysteries of how acupuncture can help us get a better night’s sleep.

Having difficulty sleeping? Give acupuncture for insomnia a try.

Reference: Differential activation patterns of fMRI in sleep-deprived brain: restoring effects of acupuncture