Acupuncture is a practice in which needles are inserted into various traditionally determined points of the body (“acupuncture points”) and then manipulated, or the theory under which the practice is done. Its practitioners variously claim that it relieves pain, treats infertility, treats disease, prevents disease, promotes general health, or can be used for therapeutic purposes.[1] Acupuncture is based on tradition and authority, not on the scientific method and science, and acupuncture’s claims of efficacy are not well established or accepted by the scientific community, so acupuncture is considered an alternative medicine, not an evidence based medicine. The practice dates back to at least the 2nd century B.C. in China. Acupuncture typically incorporates traditional Chinese medicine as an integral part of its practice and theory. Different variations of acupuncture are practiced and taught throughout the world.
Acupuncture is based on a belief that flowing through the body is a kind of “energy” called “qi” (or “chi”), although this energy may not be the same as any kind of energy measured by the science of physics. The acupuncture points are located on what are claimed to be paths (“meridians”) where the qi is believed to flow. The location of the points is based on the number of days of the year, the number of rivers flowing through the Chinese empire, and other mystical considerations. Ideas of what constitutes “
intermittent fasting health” and “healing” sometimes differ from concepts used in scientific, evidence based medicine. Acupuncture was developed prior to the science of anatomy and the cell theory upon which the science of biology is based, and disease is believed to be caused by an imbalance of yin and yang caused by a blockage or stagnation of qi, not by infectious agents.
Acupuncture is based on tradition and authority, not on the scientific method, and is not based in, and does not relate to, other interrelated fields of science such as human anatomy, human physiology, cellular biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, or physics. Scientific studies and experiments have been done attempting to prove or disprove some of the claims of its practitioners, but the conclusions of these are still the subject of debate as to whether there is any efficacy beyond a placebo effect or publishing bias. Other claims of acupuncture have not been tested in any way using scientific methodology. No structures corresponding to meridians have been found by the science of human anatomy. No force corresponding to qi (or yin and yang) has been found in the sciences of physics or human physiology.
The earliest written record of acupuncture is the Chinese text Shiji (??, English: Records of the Grand Historian) with elaboration of its history in the 2nd century BCE medical text Huangdi Neijing (????, English: Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon).[2]
Acupuncture’s origins in China are uncertain. One explanation is that some soldiers wounded in battle by arrows were believed to have been cured of chronic afflictions that were otherwise untreated,[3] and there are variations on this idea.[4] In China, the practice of acupuncture can perhaps be traced as far back as the Stone Age, with the Bian shi, or sharpened stones.[5] In 1963 a bian stone was found in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia, China pushing the origins of acupuncture into the Neolithic age.[6] Hieroglyphs and pictographs have been found dating from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BCE) which suggest that acupuncture was practiced along with moxibustion.[7]
Despite improvements in metallurgy over centuries, it was not until the 2nd century BCE during the Han Dynasty that stone and bone needles were replaced with metal.[6] The earliest records of acupuncture is in the Shiji (??, in English, Records of the Grand Historian) with references in later medical texts that are equivocal, but could be interpreted as discussing acupuncture. The earliest Chinese medical text to describe acupuncture is the Huangdi Neijing, the legendary Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (History of Acupuncture)
sell house fast which was compiled around 305–204 B.C.
The Huangdi Neijing does not distinguish between acupuncture and moxibustion and gives the same indication for both treatments. The Mawangdui texts, which also date from the 2nd century BC (though antedating both the Shiji and Huangdi Neijing), mention the use of pointed stones to open abscesses, and moxibustion but not acupuncture. However, by the 2nd century BCE, acupuncture replaced moxibustion as the primary treatment of systemic conditions.
In Europe, examinations of the 5,000-year-old mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman have identified 15 groups of tattoos on his body, some of which are located on what are now seen as contemporary acupuncture points. This has been cited as evidence that practices similar to acupuncture may have been practiced elsewhere in Eurasia during the early Bronze Age.Acupuncture spread from China to Korea, Japan and Vietnam and elsewhere in East Asia.
Around ninety works on acupuncture were written in China between the Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, and the Emperor Renzong of Song, in 1023, ordered the production of a bronze statuette depicting the meridians and acupuncture points then in use. However, after the end of the Song Dynasty, acupuncture and its practitioners began to be seen as a technical rather than scholarly profession. It became more rare in the succeeding centuries, supplanted by medications and became associated with the less prestigious practices of shamanism, midwifery and moxibustion.[9]
Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century
anything goes diet were among the first to bring reports of acupuncture to the West.[10] Jacob de Bondt, a Danish surgeon travelling in Asia, described the practice in both Japan and Java. However, in China itself the practice was increasingly associated with the lower-classes and illiterate practitioners.[11]
The first European text on acupuncture was written by Willem ten Rhijne, a Dutch physician who studied the practice for two years in Japan. It consisted of an essay in a 1683 medical text on arthritis; Europeans were also at the time becoming more interested in moxibustion, which ten Rhijne also wrote about.[12] In 1757 the physician Xu Daqun described the further decline of acupuncture, saying it was a lost art, with few experts to instruct; its decline was attributed in part to the popularity of prescriptions and medications, as well as its association with the lower classes.[13]
In 1822, an edict from the Chinese Emperor banned the practice and teaching of acupuncture within the Imperial Academy of Medicine outright, as unfit for practice by gentlemen-scholars. At this point, acupuncture was still cited in Europe with both skepticism and praise, with little study and only a small amount of experimentation.[14]In the early years after the Chinese Civil War, Chinese Communist Party leaders ridiculed traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, as superstitious, irrational and backward, claiming that it conflicted with the Party’s dedication to science as the way of progress. Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong later reversed this position, saying that “Chinese medicine and pharmacology are a great treasure house and efforts should be made to explore them and raise them to a higher level.”[15]
Acupuncture gained attention in the United States when President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. During one part of the visit, the delegation was shown a patient undergoing major surgery while fully awake, ostensibly receiving acupuncture rather than anesthesia. Later it was found that the patients selected for the surgery had both a high pain tolerance and received heavy indoctrination before the operation; these demonstration cases were also frequently receiving morphine surreptitiously through an intravenous drip that observers were told contained only fluids and nutrients.[16]
The greatest exposure in the West came when New York Times reporter James Reston, who accompanied Nixon during the visit, received acupuncture in China for post-operative pain after undergoing an emergency appendectomy under standard anesthesia. Reston believed he had pain from the acupuncture and wrote it in The New York Times.[17] In 1973 the American Internal Revenue Service allowed acupuncture to be deducted as a medical expense.[18]
In 2006, a BBC documentary Alternative Medicine filmed a patient undergoing open heart surgery allegedly under acupuncture-induced anaesthesia. It was later revealed that the patient had been given a cocktail of weak anaesthetics that in combination could have a much more powerful effect. The program was also criticised for its fanciful interpretation of the results of a brain scanning experiment.[19][20][21]
Acupuncture anesthesia for surgery has fallen out of favor with scientifically trained surgeons in China. A delegation of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal reported in 1995: We were not shown acupuncture anesthesia for surgery, this apparently having fallen out of favor with scientifically trained surgeons. Dr. Han, for instance, had been emphatic that he and his colleagues see acupuncture only as an analgesic (pain reducer), not an anesthetic (an agent that blocks all conscious sensations).[16]Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is based on a pre-scientific paradigm of medicine that developed over several thousand years and involves concepts that have no counterpart within contemporary medicine.[22] In TCM, the body is treated as a whole that is composed of several “systems of function” known as the zang-fu (??). These systems are named after specific organs, though the systems and organs are not directly associated.
The zang systems are associated with the solid, yin organs such as the liver while the fu systems are associated with the hollow yang organs such as the intestines. Health is explained as a state of balance between the yin and yang, with disease ascribed to either of these forces being unbalanced, blocked or stagnant.
The yang force is the immaterial qi, a concept that is roughly translated as “vital energy”. The yin counterpart is Blood, which is linked to but not identical with physical blood, and capitalized to distinguish the two. TCM uses a variety of interventions, including pressure, heat and acupuncture applied to the body’s acupuncture points (in Chinese ? or xue meaning “cavities”) to modify the activity of the zang-fu.
Acupuncture is we buy any house a practice in which needles are inserted into various traditionally determined points of the body (“acupuncture points”) and then manipulated, or the theory under which the practice is done. Its practitioners variously claim that it relieves pain, treats infertility, treats disease, prevents disease, promotes general health, or can be used for therapeutic purposes.[1] Acupuncture is based on tradition and authority, not on the scientific method and science, and acupuncture’s claims of efficacy are not well established or accepted by the scientific community, so acupuncture is considered an alternative medicine, not an evidence based medicine. The practice dates back to at least the 2nd century B.C. in China. Acupuncture typically incorporates traditional Chinese medicine as an integral part of its practice and theory. Different variations of acupuncture are practiced and taught throughout the world.Acupuncture is based on a belief that flowing through the body is a kind of “energy” called “qi” (or “chi”), although this energy may not be the same as any kind of energy measured by the science of physics. The acupuncture points are located on what are claimed to be paths (“meridians”) where the qi is believed to flow. The location of the points is based on the number of days of the year, the number of rivers flowing through the Chinese empire, and other mystical considerations. Ideas of what constitutes “health” and “healing” sometimes differ from concepts used in scientific, evidence based medicine. Acupuncture was developed prior to the science of anatomy and the cell theory upon which the science of biology is based, and disease is believed to be caused by an imbalance of yin and yang caused by a blockage or stagnation of qi, not by infectious agents.Acupuncture is based on tradition and authority, not on the scientific method, and is not based in, and does not relate to, other interrelated fields of science such as human anatomy, human physiology, cellular biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, or physics. Scientific studies and experiments have been done attempting to prove or disprove some of the claims of its practitioners, but the conclusions of these are still the subject of debate as to whether there is any efficacy beyond a placebo effect or publishing bias. Other claims of acupuncture have not been tested in any way using scientific methodology. No structures corresponding to meridians have been found by the science of human anatomy. No force corresponding to qi (or yin and yang) has been found in the sciences of physics or human physiology.The earliest written record of acupuncture is the Chinese text Shiji (??, English: Records of the Grand Historian) with elaboration of its history in the 2nd century BCE medical text Huangdi Neijing (????, English: Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon).[2]Acupuncture’s origins in China are uncertain. One explanation is that some soldiers wounded in battle by arrows were believed to have been cured of chronic afflictions that were otherwise untreated,[3] and there are variations on this idea.[4] In China, the practice of acupuncture can perhaps be traced as far back as the Stone Age, with the Bian shi, or sharpened stones.[5] In 1963 a bian stone was found in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia, China pushing the origins of acupuncture into the Neolithic age.[6] Hieroglyphs and pictographs have been found dating from the Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BCE) which suggest that acupuncture was practiced along with moxibustion.[7]Despite improvements in metallurgy over centuries, it was not until the 2nd century BCE during the Han Dynasty that stone and bone needles were replaced with metal.[6] The earliest records of acupuncture is in the Shiji (??, in English, Records of the Grand Historian) with references in later medical texts that are equivocal, but could be interpreted as discussing acupuncture. The earliest Chinese medical text to describe acupuncture is the Huangdi Neijing, the legendary Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (History of Acupuncture) which was compiled around 305–204 B.C.The Huangdi Neijing does not distinguish between acupuncture and moxibustion and gives the same indication for both treatments. The Mawangdui texts, which also date from the 2nd century BC (though antedating both the Shiji and Huangdi Neijing), mention the use of pointed stones to open abscesses, and moxibustion but not acupuncture. However, by the 2nd century BCE, acupuncture replaced moxibustion as the primary treatment of systemic conditions.In Europe, examinations of the 5,000-year-old mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman have identified 15 groups of tattoos on his body, some of which are located on what are now seen as contemporary acupuncture points. This has been cited as evidence that practices similar to acupuncture may have been practiced elsewhere in Eurasia during the early Bronze Age.Acupuncture spread from China to Korea, Japan and Vietnam and elsewhere in East Asia.Around ninety works on acupuncture were written in China between the Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, and the Emperor Renzong of Song, in 1023, ordered the production of a bronze statuette depicting the meridians and acupuncture points then in use. However, after the end of the Song Dynasty, acupuncture and its practitioners began to be seen as a technical rather than scholarly profession. It became more rare in the succeeding centuries, supplanted by medications and became associated with the less prestigious practices of shamanism, midwifery and moxibustion.[9]Portuguese missionaries in the 16th century were among the first to bring reports of acupuncture to the West.[10] Jacob de Bondt, a Danish surgeon travelling in Asia, described the practice in both Japan and Java. However, in China itself the practice was increasingly associated with the lower-classes and illiterate practitioners.[11]The first European text on acupuncture was written by Willem ten Rhijne, a Dutch physician who studied the practice for two years in Japan. It consisted of an essay in a 1683 medical text on arthritis; Europeans were also at the time becoming more interested in moxibustion, which ten Rhijne also wrote about.[12] In 1757 the physician Xu Daqun described the further decline of acupuncture, saying it was a lost art, with few experts to instruct; its decline was attributed in part to the popularity of prescriptions and medications, as well as its association with the lower classes.[13]In 1822, an edict from the Chinese Emperor banned the practice and teaching of acupuncture within the Imperial Academy of Medicine outright, as unfit for practice by gentlemen-scholars. At this point, acupuncture was still cited in Europe with both skepticism and praise, with little study and only a small amount of experimentation.[14]In the early years after the Chinese Civil War, Chinese Communist Party leaders ridiculed traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, as superstitious, irrational and backward, claiming that it conflicted with the Party’s dedication to science as the way of progress. Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong later reversed this position, saying that “Chinese medicine and pharmacology are a great treasure house and efforts should be made to explore them and raise them to a higher level.”[15]Acupuncture gained attention in the United States when President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972. During one part of the visit, the delegation was shown a patient undergoing major surgery while fully awake, ostensibly receiving acupuncture rather than anesthesia. Later it was found that the patients selected for the surgery had both a high pain tolerance and received heavy indoctrination before the operation; these demonstration cases were also frequently receiving morphine surreptitiously through an intravenous drip that observers were told contained only fluids and nutrients.[16]The greatest exposure in the West came when New York Times reporter James Reston, who accompanied Nixon during the visit, received acupuncture in China for post-operative pain after undergoing an emergency appendectomy under standard anesthesia. Reston believed he had pain from the acupuncture and wrote it in The New York Times.[17] In 1973 the American Internal Revenue Service allowed acupuncture to be deducted as a medical expense.[18]In 2006, a BBC documentary Alternative Medicine filmed a patient undergoing open heart surgery allegedly under acupuncture-induced anaesthesia. It was later revealed that the patient had been given a cocktail of weak anaesthetics that in combination could have a much more powerful effect. The program was also criticised for its fanciful interpretation of the results of a brain scanning experiment.[19][20][21]Acupuncture anesthesia for surgery has fallen out of favor with scientifically trained surgeons in China. A delegation of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal reported in 1995: We were not shown acupuncture anesthesia for surgery, this apparently having fallen out of favor with scientifically trained surgeons. Dr. Han, for instance, had been emphatic that he and his colleagues see acupuncture only as an analgesic (pain reducer), not an anesthetic (an agent that blocks all conscious sensations).[16]Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is based on a pre-scientific paradigm of medicine that developed over several thousand years and involves concepts that have no counterpart within contemporary medicine.[22] In TCM, the body is treated as a whole that is composed of several “systems of function” known as the zang-fu (??). These systems are named after specific organs, though the systems and organs are not directly associated.The zang systems are associated with the solid, yin organs such as the liver while the fu systems are associated with the hollow yang organs such as the intestines. Health is explained as a state of balance between the yin and yang, with disease ascribed to either of these forces being unbalanced, blocked or stagnant.The yang force is the immaterial qi, a concept that is roughly translated as “vital energy”. The yin counterpart is Blood, which is linked to but not identical with physical blood, and capitalized to distinguish the two. TCM uses a variety of interventions, including pressure, heat and acupuncture applied to the body’s acupuncture points (in Chinese ? or xue meaning “cavities”) to modify the activity of the zang-fu.
