This is one of the explanations I often use at work. Much of my practice is in a large, multi-disciplinary clinic and hospital, and I'm working with physicians who need to understand quickly how to make a referral. So this is one of the ways that I explain it. Even for people who have injuries, or degradation of spinal disks, or who have arthritic changes in the joints of the spine, acupuncture is often useful, probably because of this anti-inflammatory, swelling reducing effect, as well as its pain reducing effect. That's a great question.
Acupuncture is often effective for migraine headaches.
Migraine headaches are often a complex condition with a number of different causative factors which may need to be addressed, together with receiving acupuncture treatment, in order to get the best result. But acupuncture is still often very helpful. And no, the procedure itself is not painful. I would suggest that anyone interested in this go to our Lahey web site and look up acupuncture. There is a transcript of a web chat series that I did in January with an explanation about what acupuncture is like and if it hurts.