The meridian system and mechanism of acupuncture-a comparative review. Part 1: the meridian system (original) (raw)

Meridians in acupuncture and infrared imaging

The meridians in acupuncture are hypothesized to be made up of polarized molecules. Quantum excitations, quasi-particles and others are assumed to be the media of communication between different parts of the body connected by meridians. Infrared pictures are taken to depict the effect of acupuncture on one acupoint of a meridian to a far away pain area. & 2002 Harcourt Publishers Ltd HYPOTHESIS Acupuncture has been around for many thousands of years in China and has achieved good results in both man and animals. It has also recently begun to gain wide acceptance in the West. However, despite many scientific studies, it has still failed to achieve the recognition it needs within mainstream orthodox scientific circles. Many studies over the past 40 years have shown that electric conductivity on acupuncture points (1±4) is lower than that on neighboring points. One of the most recent studies has been carried out using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); it has reported the correlation between vision acupoints in the foot and corresponding brain cortices (5). When acupuncture stimulation is performed on a vision-related acupoint (located on the lateral aspect of the foot), fMRI shows activation of the occipital lobes. Stimulation of the eye using direct light results in similar activation in the occipital lobes when visualized by fMRI.

The Neuroanatomic Basis of the Acupuncture Principal Meridians

Nature Precedings

Acupuncture involves treating illness by inserting needles at specified body locations (acupoints). The Principal meridians are pathways that join acupoints with related physiologic effects. Despite nearly 5000 years of continuous clinical study, an accepted anatomic or physiologic basis for acupuncture's clinical effects has remained elusive. Some acupoints overlie peripheral nerves, and fMRI studies demonstrate that acupoints have specific effects on central nervous system processing. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) founders described the body's viscera based on anatomic dissections yet not a discrete nervous system. By applying computer graphics and virtual human imaging techniques to human developmental neuroanatomy, this paradox may potentially be explained: acupuncture Principal meridians likely are TCM's representation of the nervous system. This neuroanatomic model of the Principal meridians is consistent with acupuncture's known neurophysiologic effects, and may allow 5 millennia of accumulated TCM observations regarding human health and illness to be understood in modern anatomic and physiologic terms.

The status and future of acupuncture mechanism research

2008

On November 8-9, 2007, the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR) hosted an international conference to mark the tenth anniversary of the landmark NIH [National Institutes of Health] Consensus Development Conference on Acupuncture. More than 300 acupuncture researchers, practitioners, students, funding agency personnel, and health policy analysts from 20 countries attended the SAR meeting held at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD. This paper summarizes important invited lectures in the area of basic and translational acupuncture research. Specific areas include the scientific assessment of acupuncture points and meridians, the neural mechanisms of cardiovascular regulation by acupuncture, mechanisms for electroacupuncture applied to persistent inflammation and pain, basic and translational research on acupuncture in gynecologic applications, the application of functional neuroimaging to acupuncture research with specific application to carpal-tunnel syndrome and fibromyalgia, and the association of the connective tissue system to acupuncture research. In summary, mechanistic models for acupuncture effects that have been investigated experimentally have focused on the effects of acupuncture needle stimulation on the nervous system, muscles, and connective tissue. These mechanistic models are not mutually exclusive. Iterative testing, expanding, and perhaps merging of such models will potentially lead to an incremental understanding of the effects of manual and electrical stimulation of acupuncture needles that is solidly rooted in physiology.

Advanced Chinese Acupuncture Theory 01: A Mathematical Approach to How Acupuncture Works

2017

Symbolically Rendering Imaginary Acupuncture ‘Real’ based on an Anamorphic Lacanian Semiotic Structuralism and Holonomic Special Systems Theory This paper is a Mathematical theory about how Acupuncture works. In this paper we will hopefully bring to a close years of study of the roots of Holonomic Alchemical Theory as it relates to Chinese Acupuncture and Western Homeopathy based on Special Systems Theory. Of course, the end of one research project merely opens up the next. However, this is a good time to attempt to summarize results and to identify open problems in this research project that has taken me far afield only to return more recently via Zizek's interpretation of Lacanian Semiotic Structuralism to the Mathematical roots of my studies of Acupuncture. Keywords: Chinese Acupuncture, Homeopathy, Higher Dimensional Mathematics, Geometrical Simplicies, Chinese Alchemy, Lacan, Zizek, Structuralism, Semiotics, Anamorphic Eventities, Synergetics

Acupuncture - Concepts and Physiology

Acupuncture - Concepts and Physiology, 2011

At the Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein (S. Paulo, Brazil), the Latin America's most advanced private hospital, he is a member of the clinical staff, acting as a Physiatrist and Acupuncturist. In this same Hospital, he is the Coordinator of the Committee of Spirituality-Religiosity in Health. Besides his work as a physician, he has authored several scientific publications, given technical lectures and participated in academic and associative tasks. His main interest areas are Acupuncture, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Spirituality in Health, and Complementary and Alternative Therapies.

Acupuncture, autonomic nervous system and biophysical origin of acupuncture system

Vojnosanitetski pregled, 2020

In 21st century it has been accomplished an extraordinary advancement in oncoming of western and Тraditional Chinese medicine, which contributed to the mutual understanding and widespreding of acupuncture in medical treatments in western societies. In this review article results about the influence of acupuncture on autonomic nervous system (ANS) were analized. Based on it, assumptions related to ANS and acupuncture system (AS) were summerized and generalized. It was concluded that regulatory functions of ANS might have significant role in mechanisms of acupuncture therapy. Also, it seems evident, that identification of biophysical origin of AS requires an integrative approach of biomedical engineering, neurocardiology and Traditional Chinese medicine.

Acupuncture’s neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic basis

Longhua Chinese Medicine, 2021

Ever since acupuncture's tenets were first delineated in the Huangdi Neijing (Neijing) treatise ~200 BCE, theorists and researchers have sought to define the anatomic and physiologic bases for acupuncture's beneficial clinical effects in treating pain and non-pain medical conditions. In the last century, technical advances in both the basic biomedical sciences (including anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, electrophysiology, and radiology) and also clinical research methodologies have led to publication of an extensive body of basic science and clinical research publications on the topics of acupuncture anatomy, physiology, and clinical effects. This body of literature demonstrates that the beneficial clinical effects of acupuncture derive from the activation of peripheral nerves by needling, with resulting secondary modulatory effects on the peripheral nervous system, the central nervous system (CNS) (including the limbic system), the autonomic nervous system, and the immunologic and endocrinologic systems. A neuroanatomic and neurophysiologic model of acupuncture's mechanisms and effects is the only theory that can be reconciled with research findings of the efficacy of laser acupuncture and the positive randomized clinical trial results in studies that used non-penetrating or minimally penetrating "sham" needle control interventions, and this model is also consistent with anatomic and physiologic descriptions contained in the Neijing. This review article summarizes the anatomic, basic science, and clinical evidence that demonstrates acupuncture signaling and its myriad clinical benefits can be understood as arising from and transduced by neural mechanisms.