I am often asked, "How does acupuncture work?"  Though I follow the rules, methods and teachings of Chinese medicine, including Five-Element, Yin/Yang, Meridian, Zang-Fu (organ), pulse diagnosis and other basic traditional teachings and methods, when it comes to western medicine or modern medicine we simply don’t know how acupuncture works in measurable western scientific terms. There have been several thoughts on this from a variety of sources and theories have arisen from decades of testing, but in truth, what we “know,” but find difficult to measure, is that acupuncture appears to:

• Have a regulatory effect generally. Raising some brain chemicals, hormones, etc. when they need to be raised and lowering others when they need to be lowered. This is done, most likely, by stimulating the natural innate knowledge of our bodies – our innate drive towards homeostasis or “balance.”
• Offer a calming effect generally. We all have heard about the detrimental effects of stress and stress related hormones. Acupuncture appears to offset these reactions in the body not only calming the person temporarily but possibly protecting the person from damage from stress over extended periods of time.
• Has a reducing effect on inflammation locally and throughout the body. Certainly in pain cases it appears that acupuncture reduces inflammation and promotes healing. Modern research has shown detrimental effects of chronic systemic inflammation (fibromyalgia, parkinson’s, heart disease, diabetes, etc.) and acupuncture’s ability to treat these conditions must in some way be related to offsetting these systemic responses.

While we can observe these changes and theorize about them based on clinical experiences we still do not have a “how” with acupuncture. For now, as practitioners, it is important to stay firmly rooted in the thousands of years of Chinese Medical history, theory, and techniques of application. And, as others have done before us, to work to extend and “perfect” these theories as we mature as practitioners. For the public, this is a crucial reason why acupuncture should only be performed by fully trained acupuncturists who have the theoretical backing to properly apply acupuncture. As you may know, in some areas people from other medical fields (MD’s, DC’s, etc.) are allowed to practice acupuncture with little or no training. While many of these practitioners may have the medical knowledge to not hurt someone with acupuncture they rarely have a grasp of the deeper theories of the medicine which will lead to inferior results in many cases. Perhaps more importantly for the field, they will not be as able to share their experiences as practitioners because they do not speak the “language” of Chinese Medicine.
So, for now, just know that acupuncture does work on a broad range of cases but you will see differences from practitioner to practitioner, from style to style, and what works one time may not work another time. There is no fault in exploring various practitioners as a patient and various styles of acupuncture as practitioners and patients. Communicating with your practitioner about what felt most effective or what didn’t feel right is useful as we are all explorers to some degree in this medicine. Knowing that we all want the same thing from this vast array of theory and techniques – that is to be well – it is an exciting journey. So while I cannot tell you exactly how we are going to accomplish health in precise western terms, a strong root in the long history of this medicine can certainly help to get us there.

Above article taken from https://yinyanghouse.com/acupuncture/how-does-acupuncture-work