What is the principle of Chinese medicine acupuncture?

We know from TV that the phrases such as "curing diseases and saving lives like a living Bodhisattva" and "miracle doctor who brings people back to health with his miraculous hands" are used to describe the doctor's superb medical skills and are the common people's words of praise for the doctors in ancient times. In today's social life, we often hear the term "old Chinese medicine doctor", especially in rural areas. Most people think they are magical and can solve many difficult and complicated problems. So what is the principle of Chinese medicine acupuncture?

Guided by the theory of meridians and acupoints, the method uses needles, moxa leaves and other main tools and materials to pierce or burn specific parts of the body to regulate the body's balance.

"Acupoint" means gap. For a long time, relevant personnel have explored the electrophysiological characteristics of acupoints and found that there are some "good conduction points" on the skin with particularly high conductivity, and their locations are consistent with those of acupoints. These "good conduction points" can be measured not only on living people, but also on corpses and animals. In daily life, many factors such as physiological activities such as eating, sleeping, and exercise, changes in the external environment such as time, season, and temperature, and changes in mental and psychological state will affect the resistance value of the "good conduction points".

The subcutaneous electric field area with the highest potential is where the main nerve trunks and nerve endings pass through. It is the place with the highest electric potential energy in the human and animal bodies. Damage or necrosis of this part, as well as external damage and obstruction, will cause numbness, swelling, itching, pain, soreness, and even discomfort in tissues, organs, circulation, heart and brain, and may also lead to disability, exhaustion, suffocation and death. For example, after stimulating certain parts of the skin with the weakest current, it is found that the stimulated muscles will contract, and have the characteristics of deep tissue sensitivity, nodules and radiating pain. These surface areas that can induce muscle contraction are called motor points. These points are mostly located where nerve endings are dense or where thicker nerve fibers pass. After comparing the locations of motor points with those of traditional acupoints, it was surprising to find that the distribution of the two is almost the same.

When acupuncture is performed on acupuncture points, the friction between tissues and the interaction between the metal needle and the tissue dielectric may cause damage to the muscle fibers and nerve fibers in the local tissue. The distribution of the two is also slightly similar, so some characteristics of acupoints are believed to be very similar to trigger points.

Some scholars dissected and observed 324 acupuncture points on corpses and found that 99.6% of the acupuncture points were related to nerves. They further discovered that the nerve distribution of meridian points and related organs often belongs to the same spinal cord segment, and the acupoints of the superficial and internal meridians also mostly belong to the same spinal cord segment. Other scholars have shown that there are about 100 acupuncture points throughout the body with nerve bundles running deep through the tissues, and are also related to the receptors at the peripheral terminals of sensory ganglion cells such as muscle spindles, tendon spindles, tactile corpuscles, and annular corpuscles. From an evolutionary point of view, the epidermis and nervous tissue have a common origin, and nerve centers exist at the projection points of various skin areas and internal organs.

Ancient acupuncture and moxibustion books clearly tell us that acupoints are not isolated points on the body surface, but refer to specific pores where the qi of the internal organs and meridians of the human body are transferred or infused into the intersection of the flesh, skin and bones on the body surface. They are special parts that are closely connected with deep tissues and organs and communicate with each other. Acupoints are both the parts of the body surface where the qi of the meridians flows from the inside to the outside and is infused into the parts of the body surface that reflect the disease, and the parts of the body surface that receive stimulation from the outside to the inside to prevent and treat the disease. In this sense, acupoints are both the reaction points of the disease and the stimulation points and treatment sites of the treatment. In short, acupoints are the "doors and windows" for information exchange when changes occur in the qi and blood inside and outside the human body's internal organs. They are also the best sensitive points for diseases to manifest on the body surface and receive treatment. That is, acupuncture is to stimulate these sensitive points to achieve the purpose of treating diseases or conditioning.

After reading the above introduction to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture, I think everyone should have some understanding. In fact, the principle of traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture is very simple. The main purpose of improving and treating diseases is to insert needles into acupuncture points. Although the traditional Chinese medicine methods are very old and some of them have no scientific basis, they have brought good news to many patients.