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Editorial

Volume 2 Issue 4 - 2018

Acupuncture Points - Detection, Morphology, and Surgical Recommendations

Maria Kuman*

Holistic Research Institute, 1414 Barcelona Dr., Knoxville, TN 37923

*Corresponding Author: Maria Kuman Holistic Research Institute, 1414 Barcelona Dr., Knoxville, TN 37923. E-mail: holisticare@mariakuman.com

Received: June 03, 2018; Published: July 05, 2018

Abstract

This article explains the morphology of the acupuncture points. Under each of them lie a dense set of thin blood vessels and a dense set of thin nerve fibers without myelin cover, which are like wires without insulation. This explains the higher electrical conductivity of these points and why surgical cuts should be avoiding the acupuncture points. When the acupuncture points are avoided, the cuts are less painful, cause less bleeding, and heal faster without complications. The article also explains how the acupuncture points can be detected with modern technology or seen when observed at a slant toward the surface.

Keyword: Acupuncture points; Detection; morphology; Surgical recommendation

Introduction

The Chinese introduced acupuncture to the Western world, but the Europeans accepted it as alternative cure only after a few decades of research on acupuncture. But after this, Europe accepted acupuncture on an equal basis with the western medicine. Alternative method of cure means: if the western medicine cannot help a patient, he is referred to an acupuncturist. To be able to refer patients to acupuncturists, all medical students in Europe are bound to take a general course in acupuncture; they cannot graduate without this course.

In the United States acupuncture is now making first steps toward establishment, but there is no clarity as to whether acupuncture is a placebo, mysterious cure, or it has a scientific explanation. Grant money were never available for acupuncture research, except $20,000 for the whole US during President Clinton.

In August 1994, I attended a seminar at the Center for Multi-disciplinary Study of Pain at Washington State University in Seattle, Washington. Lecturer was one of the staff members. She was supposed to study the literature and report on what acupuncture is and how it cures if it does. Her final statement was that acupuncture seems to work as a placebo, which means acupuncture does not do anything to the body; the patient is cured because he believes acupuncture can cure him.

I asked a very naive question: “O.K. ‘Placebo’ means that the person believes he will be cured and his belief cured him. Yes?” “Yes”, she said. I then asked, “If acupuncture is a placebo, how would you explain its success in veterinary medicine, if we cannot convince the animals that they are going to get better after acupuncture treatments?” (See the author’s book: M. Kuman, Modern Aspects of Ancient Acupuncture [1], which explains scientifically how acupuncture works). So, acupuncture is not a placebo. What is acupuncture?

What Is Acupuncture Point?
The word ‘acupuncture’ means puncturing of the skin with needles (‘acu’ means ‘needle’). The needling is done at specific places on the skin surface called ‘acupuncture points’. Every organ is represented on the surface of the body with a line of acupuncture points called acupuncture meridian.

Were the acupuncture points discovered accidentally? The answer is NO! When pathology of the organ is present or is to come, some points of the organ’s meridian are more painful at the touch than the rest of the skin. Some very sensitive patients with heart problems can feel pain irradiating from their heart and reaching the little finger of their left hand, where the heart meridian ends. Therefore, the acupuncture meridian representing a specific organ is the pathway of propagation of the organ’s pain.

Therefore, neither the acupuncture points nor the meridians were empirically found as some authors think [2]. They are the pathways of propagation of pain and the level of experienced pain depends on the sensitivity of the individual. While some very sensitive individuals feel pain irradiating along the meridian, other less sensitive individuals feel pain only when they touch the trigger point of the meridian, which need to be treated with acupuncture to restore the function of the pathological organ.

Morphology of the Acupuncture Points
Morphological study [3] has found that each acupuncture point is a dense set of thin nerve fibers without myelin cover, which are like wires without insulation. They determine the high electrical conductivity of these points. Instruments were developed for measuring the electrical conductivity of the acupuncture points and through them the shape and sizes of these points were found.

I have measured and can measure the conductivity of acupuncture points, which are conducting ellipses about one inch long and a half-inch short. These conducting ellipses are oriented with their long axes along a line called acupuncture meridian. The distance between the conducting acupuncture points in an acupuncture meridian is three quarters of an inch.

The conducting acupuncture points are imbedded in the semi-conducting media of our skin tissue. For more details see the author’s book: Modern Aspects of Ancient Acupuncture [1]. The body has 14 basic acupuncture meridians, running upward in front and downward on the back of the body and on the extremities - upward in the lateral and downward on the medial sides.

It was found (by myself and other authors [4,5]) that the painful points that signal pathology have either higher or lower electric potential than the points of adjacent acupuncture meridians. After acupuncture treatment the electrical potential of the treated point shifts toward normal, and the level of pain decreases.

Dunaevska [4], and independently from her Nagieva [5], first measured the conductivity of the acupuncture points in Russia and found that the acupuncture points are more conducting than the media they are imbedded in. And they also found that the point’s conductivity changes after acupuncture treatment.

Later, many other countries started measuring conductivity as a measure of what acupuncture has achieved. In Japan, the systematic measurements of the electrical conductivity of the acupuncture points after each treatment and their graphic representation became known under the name “System Reodoraku” and this was accepted worldwide. These systematic measurements helped understand how acupuncture works.

Detection of Acupuncture Points
A. By Measuring Electrical Conductivity
As said, under the skin of the acupuncture points, there is a dense set of thin neurons without myelin cover, which are like wires without insulation. This makes the acupuncture points more electrically conductive than the surrounding semi-conducting media, which allows their detection by measuring conductivity.

B. By Measuring Temperature Differences
Morphological study [3] also proved that each acupuncture point is a dense set of thin blood vessels. This makes the temperature of the acupuncture points higher, which allows their detection with temperature detectors, such as liquid crystals, which change color at fractions of the degree. When the skin is covered with such liquid crystals, the acupuncture points can be seen as ellipses with a color different from that of the surrounding tissue.

C. By Measuring Oxygen Consumption
The dense sets of thin blood vessels under the skin of the acupuncture points also makes their oxygen consumption higher. If so, the acupuncture points could also be detected with instruments measuring oxygen consumption. Such detection was done in Hungary and the results were published in 1984 and reported in 1985 by Dr. A. Eory [6].

D. By Making Them Visible in High Frequency Electric Field (Kirlian Photography)
High frequency electric field, when applied to the acupuncture points would suck ions: from the dense sets of thin nerve fibers without myelin cover and from the dense sets of blood vessels under the skin. These ions would be accelerated to higher energies, which would allow them to ionize the air molecules.

The air molecules on their side are accelerated by the high frequency electric field and create more ions. As a result, avalanches of high-energy ions and photons are created, which make the acupuncture points glow. The acupuncture points could not only be seen, they could be photographed, and this is called Kirlian photography [7,8]. Thus, the acupuncture points and meridians are real and their measurable electrical changes during acupuncture treatment are also real.

E. By Palpitation
At palpitation the pathological acupuncture points are not only more painful, they frequently feel as nodes. The reason for this is, anatomically the acupuncture points are either tendons, which connect a muscle to a bone, or lymph nodes, which are usually at the junctions of a few lymph vessels.

The most frequent reason for muscle tension is stress. The body under stress is mobilized to fight or flight, adapt or resist the stressors. A lot of muscles are mobilized for the fight and remain under tension long after the stress is over. When a muscle is tightened by stress, its tendon feels like a node. A needling (acupuncture treatment) of this point (tendon) relaxes the whole muscle.

The lymph system provides the white blood cells, which are the defending soldiers of our immune system. When the immune system is mobilized to fight an invader: virus, microbe, or any other germ, the lymph nodes are swollen, painful to the touch, and feel like nodes because these are the places of fight of the white blood cells of the body with the invader-germ. Lymph nodes are especially abundant in the neck area because many microbes are brought into the body through the mouth and the nose with the food and the air.

Also, each mobilization reaction for response to a stressor, called stress, weakens the immune system of the body and this allows the germs in the body to start multiplying (see author’s book What Everybody Ought to Know about Chronic Pain, Chronic Diseases, and Cancer [9]). The fight between the invader-germs and the white blood cells of the body makes the lymph nodes swollen, painful to the touch, and makes them feel like nods.

While needling the muscle tendons brings a full relaxation, treatment of the lymph nodes with needles stimulates the immune system and helps fight the disease. The fact that each acupuncture point usually feels as a node and is either a tendon of a tense muscle or a swollen lymph node has never been properly underlined in any acupuncture book, and it is very important. I gladly offered it in my book Modern Aspects of Ancient Acupuncture [1].

F. By Seeing the Acupuncture Points with the Naked Eye
As a matter of fact, neither equipment nor liquid crystals are necessary to find the acupuncture points because they can be seen with the naked eye. Books on dermatology, like that of G. Stuttgen [5] claim that the skin over places with a dense set of nerve fibers without myelin cover is shinier when observed at a slant toward the skin surface, feels smoother to the touch, and barely has hair follicles.

Since each acupuncture point is over a dense set of nerve fibers without myelin cover, the skin over an acupuncture point must look shinier and it does. It also feels smoother to the touch and barely has hair follicles. This means that a trained eye should be able to see these points at a small angle to the skin surface. Korean authors [10] first claimed that they could see the acupuncture points with the naked eye when looking at a slant toward the skin surface. However, in their papers there was no explanation as to what makes the acupuncture points visible.

Our explanation is that the acupuncture points are visible at a slant toward the skin surface because the acupuncture points are over a dense set of nerve fibers without myelin cover and the skin over such area is shinier, softer, and does not have hair follicles.

Results and Discussion – Impact on Surgery

Considering the fact that each acupuncture point is a dense set of nerve fibers without myelin cover and a dense set of thin blood vessels, it is natural to expect that if surgical cuts are done avoiding the acupuncture points, the surgery would be less traumatic and the recovery will be faster.

Indeed, at the 8^th World Congress on Acupuncture in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1983, it was reported by Russian surgeons with knowledge of acupuncture that when the surgical cuts were not passing through acupuncture points, the recovery was faster and with fewer complications.

References

Citation: Maria Kuman. “Acupuncture Points - Detection, Morphology, and Surgical Recommendations”. Chronicle of Medicine and Surgery 2.4 (2018): 190-194.

Copyright: © 2018 Maria Kuman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.