What is the difference between acupuncture and massage?

The core difference between the two is the intervention path and level of action. Massage uses external manual force to act on muscles, fascia, joints and other soft tissue levels, mostly with the main purpose of improving local circulation and adjusting structural misalignments. Acupuncture uses filiform needles to penetrate the skin to stimulate meridian points, which can not only regulate local soft tissue problems, but also regulate the functions of the organs through meridian conduction.

The young man with stiff neck who was treated last week is a very typical example. He had to face the air conditioner all night the night before. When he woke up in the morning, his neck was tilted to the left side and he dared not move. He also suffered from gastric bloating caused by eating cold food the day before. First, I pressed the induration of the trapezius and sternocleidomastoid muscles for 10 minutes. His neck could rotate in a small range, but the flatulence was not relieved at all. Later, I pricked the local Ashi point with Zhongwan and Zusanli, and left the needle for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, the movement of his neck was basically normal. After two burps, most of the flatulence disappeared.

Nowadays, there are different voices in the industry. Many experts who study techniques believe that as long as the intensity and placement are precise enough, deep-pressing acupoints can achieve similar organ-regulatory effects as acupuncture. I usually meet children who are afraid of needles and elderly people with weak coagulation function. They will also use heavy pressure on acupoints instead of acupuncture. Some mild cases can indeed achieve similar effects. However, generally speaking, the depth of action of acupuncture and the efficiency of conduction along the meridian are still much higher than that of manual methods. For example, when the Hegu point is pierced to gain Qi, many people will have obvious soreness and swelling running up their arms. Unless you are an experienced technician with more than ten years of experience, this kind of conductive feeling is difficult to achieve with ordinary massage methods.

Many people also have deep misunderstandings about the pain of these two intervention methods. They always think that acupuncture must be more painful than massage. In fact, it is not. A skilled doctor inserts the needle quickly, and the moment the skin is broken is at most like a mosquito bite. The subsequent soreness, numbness and swelling are normal reactions of "De Qi", and most of them are within the acceptable range. On the contrary, when the muscles are severely adhered, the pain will be much sharper when massaged and rubbed away. A while ago, a little girl who works in design suffered from dorsal myofasciitis. When she pressed the hard knot of the infraspinatus muscle, she cried and gasped. Later, she switched to acupuncture and pricked local acupuncture points. After the soreness and swelling came up, the knots dissipated quickly. She said that the pain was not half as much as the massage.

To use a less appropriate analogy, our muscle fascia is like an elastic band that connects all parts of the body. Massage means directly kneading the knotted parts with your hands and smoothing out the stuck areas. Most of the time, it is uncomfortable to adjust.； Acupuncture is like poking at the key nodes of an elastic band. Not only can it loosen the knot in front of you, but it can also follow the route of the elastic band and adjust small problems that are connected to the other end and far away.

In fact, in daily clinical practice, only one type is rarely used. For example, in patients with lumbar disc herniation, acupuncture is first used to relax the deeply tense psoas muscle, and then the dislocated facet joints and protruding nucleus pulposus are restored using techniques. The recovery speed is much faster than using only one type. There is no need to separate the two too far. It is just a matter of choosing an appropriate method according to different needs and tolerance.