Manual needle stimulation at two acupuncture points altered stomach electrical rhythms and cardiac autonomic activity, unlike unstimulated needling.
Healthy volunteers were randomly allocated to receive acupuncture with and without manual needle stimulation in different sequences, or sham acupuncture. Researchers recorded stomach electrical activity, heart electrical activity, cardiac function, blood pressure, breathing rate, and skin electrical conductance, comparing real acupuncture with sham treatment and stimulated with unstimulated needling.
Real acupuncture did not improve the primary measure of regular stomach slow-wave activity compared with sham acupuncture. However, manually stimulated needling produced less regular stomach rhythm, more abnormally slow stomach waves, greater gastric electrical power, and marked changes in measures of cardiac autonomic regulation compared with unstimulated needling.
