What is the difference between the effects of acupuncture and massage?

As a practitioner who has been operating a community physiotherapy center for almost 8 years, my most intuitive feeling is that the effect of acupuncture is more deep-seated, faster-acting, and more targeted, while the effect of massage is more superficial relaxation, more comfortable, and more universal. There is no absolute advantage or disadvantage between the two, but the scenarios and needs are very different.

Last week, my aunt received a stiff neck. She woke up in the morning and was in so much pain that she couldn't even brush her teeth. She was helped in by her son. I first pricked the Houxi and Stiff Neck Points on her hands. While twisting the needles, I asked her to slowly move her neck. In less than 3 minutes, she said "yo" and said she could turn more than half a circle. After that, I loosened the tight muscles in her shoulders and neck for 10 minutes, and she went to buy groceries on the same day. If I had only given her a massage, it would have taken more than 20 minutes, and the pain would have made her gasp.

If you compare our muscle layer and meridians to water pipes buried in the soil, massage is like loosening the upper layer of soil, slowly kneading away the hard mud wrapped around the outer wall of the water pipe, so that the surrounding circulation can be smoothed first, so those who sit for a long time can After more than ten hours, my whole shoulder and back were sore and I felt heavy with fatigue. The relaxation after the massage was incomparable to acupuncture. When I was tired after get off work, I would ask a colleague to massage my shoulders and neck for half an hour. It felt numb and numb, which was much more comfortable than acupuncture.

Acupuncture is different. It directly inserts needles into adhesion points or acupuncture points of corresponding depth, which is equivalent to directly detecting the location of blocked water pipes and breaking open the internal blockage. Therefore, many people will see more obvious improvements after treatment for deep-seated old muscle knots, sharp neuralgia, and even problems with medical symptoms such as dysmenorrhea and chronic gastritis. Of course, there are different voices in the industry. Many scholars believe that the improvement of acupuncture on internal medicine problems is more of a placebo effect. There is no completely unified conclusion yet. My own experience after doing it for so many years is that some customers have reported that after a month of continuous acupuncture, the degree of dysmenorrhea has been reduced by most. However, some people have no reaction at all after acupuncture. Individual differences are indeed quite large.

I usually encounter many customers who are confused about which one to choose as soon as they come in. I never give a standard answer directly. If you are tired from working overtime that day and want to relax, or you are particularly afraid of needles or your skin is prone to allergies and marks, then massage is definitely more suitable.； If you have been in pain for several days, have clear tender points, or want to relieve symptoms quickly, and can accept the slight soreness and swelling caused by acupuncture, then acupuncture will be much more efficient. Previously, a young man who ran a marathon suffered from iliotibial band friction syndrome. The pain made it difficult for him to go up and down stairs. After the injection, he was able to squat normally. After that, he used three deep leg massages to relax the tight fascia. He returned to normal training within a week. Many times, we will use the two together, and the effect is much better than using one alone.

Anyway, the longer I do this, the more I feel that no one of these two technologies is more advanced than the other. The one that matches your current needs is the best choice.