Stress is real and can have a profound impact on your health. Uncontrolled stress can increase the risk of conditions such as heart attack and stroke, as well as cause insomnia, digestive issues, tension headaches, migraines, and back pain.
Acupuncture cannot remove the stress from your life, but it can help you deal with it better. In my 20 years of practice, I’ve found that whatever brings someone into the clinic, back pain, insomnia, a skin condition, easing their stress along the way is often part of what makes the treatment work.
A few of acupuncture’s good “side effects” include better sleep, less anxiety and depression, and help in stress management.
The Body’s Reaction to Stress
Stress is often thought of as an emotion or a feeling, but it’s actually a physiological reaction to a situation in which you feel threatened. In many cases this reaction is good. Stress can help us meet our goals with an extra boost of energy. At the same time, constant and overwhelming stress can have serious long-term health consequences.
Our reaction to stress is characterized by the fight-or-flight response, regulated by the sympathetic nervous system. This response evolved to prepare us for defending ourselves in times of danger. While the physical threats in our lives have changed (not many of us are worried about being chased by tigers), our bodies react the same way to high-pressure jobs, an argument, traffic, or the pressures we put on ourselves.
Acupuncture has been shown to directly influence the autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the fight-or-flight response as well as its opposite, the calming “rest and digest” state. A 2025 systematic review of acupuncture for burnout in high-stress professions found that it consistently eased symptoms like emotional exhaustion and anxiety, in part by improving heart rate variability, a physiological marker of how well the nervous system recovers from stress.¹ This offers one explanation for why patients so often describe feeling calmer after treatment, even when stress wasn’t why they came in..
Stress and the Body’s Organs, in Chinese Medicine
In Chinese medicine the mind and body are connected. Emotions aren’t just felt, they have real effects on the body. Stress can cause anger, frustration, worry, or fear, which is normal and healthy in the short term. Problems arise when the feeling is constant and excessive, or when there’s no outlet for it, so it builds up inside the body instead.
The pattern I see most often with chronic stress is Liver Qi stagnation, since the Liver governs the smooth flow of Qi throughout the body, and stress is the emotion most closely tied to disrupting that flow. This can show up as irritability, a tight chest, digestive upset, or tension headaches. Since Liver Qi stagnation is also the pattern most closely tied to anxiety, treatment for the two often overlaps; for a closer look at that connection, see how I approach anxiety specifically.
Acupuncture
For stress with a strong physical component, tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, tension headaches, I often add points like Jian Jing (Gallbladder 21) and Feng Chi (Gallbladder 20) to release the muscular tension that builds up alongside the mental strain. Nei Guan (Pericardium 6) and Bai Hui (Governing Vessel 20) help calm the nervous system directly, working with the body’s fight-or-flight response rather than against it. Because chronic stress so often settles into a pattern of Liver Qi stagnation, the same underlying pattern behind much of the anxiety I treat, point selection frequently overlaps with what I’d use for anxiety, though the emphasis shifts toward releasing physical tension when stress is the primary complaint.
Chinese Herbal Medicine
Herbal treatment for stress-driven Liver Qi stagnation often overlaps with what I use for anxiety, including Xiao Yao San (see my Anxiety page for more on that formula and the research behind it).
When stress comes with more pronounced agitation, palpitations, or a startle-easily quality, I’ll sometimes turn to Chai Hu Jia Long Gu Mu Li Tang (Bupleurum Plus Dragon Bone and Oyster Shell Decoction), a formula that settles an overactive Shen alongside moving Liver Qi. Laboratory research in animal models has found this formula reduces stress-induced anxiety behavior comparably to diazepam, and may help protect against the anxiety that builds from chronic, repeated stress.3, 4
What to Expect
Treatment for stress typically runs weekly for the first several sessions, then spaces out as your baseline resilience improves. Many patients notice they’re less reactive to the same stressors within the first few visits, even before the stressors themselves change. Because acupuncture address the whole person, you can see many issues improve at the same time such as stress, pain, sleeping, and digestion.
Get Acupuncture, Relieve Stress
Stress isn’t something acupuncture can erase from your life, but it can change how your body handles it. Regular treatment helps interrupt the stress cycle before it builds into something harder to manage.
Schedule an appointment online or call 212-319-5757.
Reference
- Shaska E, Leivaditis V, Nikolopoulou A, et al. Harnessing acupuncture for burnout management: A systematic review of its efficacy and applications in high-stress professions. Surgical Chronicles. 2025;30(2):250.
- Li YW, Wang Y, Mo YF, et al. The autonomic nervous system: A potential link to the efficacy of acupuncture. Front Neurosci. 2022;16:1038945.
- Mizoguchi K, Ikeda R, Shoji H, et al. Saikokaryukotsuboreito, a herbal medicine, prevents chronic stress-induced anxiety in rats: comparison with diazepam. J Nat Med. 2009;63(1):69-74.
- Kitai Y, Gotoh L, Hori H. The potential role of Saiko-ka-ryukotsu-borei-to in mitigating the severity of anxiety induced by social defeat stress in mice. PCN Rep. 2025;4(3):e70191.