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

To put it simply, the effect of massage is more "relieving the superficial", while the core advantage of acupuncture is that it can "penetrate the inner". The two are actually quite different in terms of their path of action and adaptation issues.

I have been doing rehabilitation physiotherapy for almost ten years, and the most common question I get every day is how to choose between the two. Just last week, I met a 32-year-old programmer. He suffered from lumbar protrusion caused by sitting for a long time. His right buttock and calf were numb for almost three weeks. I first massaged it four times at a massage shop near my home. After each massage, my whole body felt relaxed the same day, and the numbness would return after a good sleep. Later, he came to see me and I gave him Weizhong, Yanglingquan, and the Ahshi point on the waist and hip area three times. The numbness was 80% gone. To put it bluntly, it’s not magical. The root cause of his problem is that the protruding nucleus pulposus compresses the nerve roots, causing inflammatory edema in the deep layers. Most of the massage force can only loosen the superficial waist and hip muscles, but cannot touch the deep-seated inflammatory lesions, which is equivalent to boiling water to stop the boil. Acupuncture’s filiform needles can accurately penetrate the lesion location, promote local microcirculation and bring out the inflammatory metabolites, which naturally relieves the disease from the root.

Of course, this does not mean that acupuncture is better than massage. Last month, there was a little sales girl who stood in high heels for 8 hours every day. Her calves were as hard as dried dough and so sore that she had to struggle to go upstairs. It was just a simple muscle strain and strain, not even fascial adhesion. I asked her to go to the massage department downstairs for two massages, and then went home to roll a foam roller. It cost less than 100 yuan and everything was cured. This kind of purely superficial muscle tension problem, not only the massage is comfortable, but also cost-effective, so it really can't be punished by acupuncture.

Now the industry does not say that there is an absolute difference between the two. Many teachers who do deep massage and organ massage feel that as long as the technique is precise enough and the penetration is strong enough, the deep regulating effect of acupuncture can be achieved. There are also acupuncturists who believe that precise stimulation of acupoints cannot be completely replaced by technique. I have been doing clinical practice for so long, but I feel that there is no need to separate the two methods. For example, when I encounter patients with frozen shoulder who are so painful that they cannot sleep at night, I usually insert acupuncture first to suppress the deep inflammatory pain. After the patient dares to move their arms, I then combine it with massage to loosen the adhering soft tissue around the shoulder. The recovery speed is much faster than using one method alone.

In fact, you can think of your body's discomfort as a potato buried in the soil. Massage is equivalent to digging up the surface soil first and picking up the exposed small potatoes. If the potatoes are buried deep, you have to use acupuncture, a thin probe, to accurately penetrate the location and loosen the deep soil, so that the root problem can be cleared away.