As early as more than 2,000 years ago, our ancestors already knew that there are many special sensory points and acupoints on the human skin. The famous medical classic "Huangdi Neijing" written in the fifth to first century BC has pointed out that "the qi points have their own names" and recorded 160 acupoint names. Huangfu Mi of the Jin Dynasty compiled the "Acupuncture and Moxibustion Classics A and B", the pioneering masterpiece of acupuncture in my country, which discussed the names, aliases, locations and indications of 340 acupuncture points on the human body one by one. In the Song Dynasty, Wang Weiyi redefined acupuncture points, corrected errors, and wrote the "Acupuncture Map of Bronze Figures on Acupoints". He was also the first to develop and cast two acupuncture bronze figures specifically for acupuncture teaching and examinations. Their shapes are lifelike and their faces are carved. Precise and impressive. It can be seen that ancient Chinese medical scientists knew how to treat diseases based on acupoints a long time ago, and formed a complete theoretical system of acupoints during long-term practice.
"Lei Jing·Ren Zhi Si Hai" records: "Shu, Shu, and Shu are all common in this classic." Therefore, acupoints are also called Shu points and Shu points, and they are also called acupoints, acupoints or channels. of. According to the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture points on the human body have three main functions. They are the parts where the qi of the meridians is infused on the body surface, where diseases are reflected on the body surface, and where acupuncture, massage, qigong and other therapies are applied. Acupoints have the miraculous effects of "quickly pressing" and "rapidly dispelling diseases". However, what is the essence of acupuncture points? Is it really a special structure of the human body? For a long time, people have speculated about this, and there is no consensus.
Many people explore the essence of acupuncture points from their electrical properties. In 1950, Nakatani of Japan used 12 volts of direct current to pass through human skin and found that there were certain "good conduction points" on the skin with particularly high conductivity, and their locations matched the locations of acupuncture points. Shortly thereafter, the famous French acupuncturist Niboat, with the assistance of his assistant, confirmed this phenomenon by measuring skin resistance, and determined that the resistance of an acupoint was only half of the resistance of the surrounding skin. Measurements performed on cadavers yielded the same results. In the late 1950s, Chinese scholars' research on acupoint electrophysiology basically confirmed that acupuncture points have the characteristics of low resistance and high potential. However, it is speculated that the total area of ????acupoints in the whole body only accounts for four ten thousandths of the body surface, while there are many parts of the body's surface that are far from limited to acupuncture points. Moreover, many factors such as physiological activities such as eating, sleeping, and exercise, external environmental changes such as timing, season, and temperature, as well as precise psychological state, will affect the skin resistance value. No wonder researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Hypertension lamented that it is quite difficult to measure meridian points with this method (skin resistance measurement). France's Dela Foye spent five years applying this method to measure acupuncture points, but the results obtained were very different from those of Chinese acupuncture points, and he had to abruptly stop this research.
There are also people who compare and analyze the ancient acupoint theory and modern medical theory, trying to explain them with new theories and new concepts. For example, when electric current stimulates the skin, the stimulated muscles will contract. The part of the body surface that produces the largest muscle contraction when stimulated by the weakest current is called a motor point. American scholar Jin Lin compared the locations of exercise points and traditional acupuncture points and proposed that the distribution of the two is almost the same. Masayoshi Hyoto of Japan and Frost of the United States compared acupuncture points with trigger points. Trigger points are considered to be localized sites in the body's muscle tissue that are characterized by deep tissue sensitivity, nodules, and radiating pain. Although its mechanism is not yet clear, it is generally believed to be caused by muscle spasms, endocrine disorders or muscle tension due to pain or other reasons. When acupuncture points are used, damage to muscle fibers and nerve fibers in local tissues will occur due to mutual friction between tissues and the interaction between the metal needle and the tissue dielectric. In addition, the distribution of the two is also slightly the same. Therefore, they believe that certain properties of acupuncture points are very similar to trigger points. Some people even think that they are just the same thing with different names. There are also research reports that acupuncture points are closely related to electrical differential points and skin activity points. These multi-channel studies reflect the characteristics of acupuncture points from the side, and undoubtedly have certain reference value for exploring the mysteries of acupoints.
Some people are focusing on studying the morphological structure of acupuncture points, hoping to uncover the mystery of acupoints in one fell swoop. Experts from Shanghai First Medical College dissected and observed 324 acupuncture points on the corpse and found that 99.6% of the acupoints were related to nerves. They further found that the nerve distribution of meridian points and related organs often belong to the same spinal cord segment, and the acupoints on the outer and inner meridians often belong to the same spinal cord segment. Japanese scholar Shutaro Mori proved that among the acupuncture points on the whole body, about 100 acupuncture points have nerve bundles running through the deep tissue.
Acupoints are also related to receptors at the terminal ends of sensory ganglion cells such as muscle spindles, nerve tendon spindles, tactile corpuscles, and annular corpuscles. From a genetic point of view, the epidermis and nervous tissue have the same origin. The nerve center has projection points for various skin areas and internal organs. Therefore, there may be a biological correlation between acupuncture points and embryonic morphology. However, some studies have reached the opposite conclusion: both acupuncture points and non-acupoint tissues have nerve fiber distribution, and there is no obvious difference in their histology. It is still unclear as to how the neural tissue underlying acupuncture points differs from non-acupoint areas. It has also been reported that acupuncture points are closely related to blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. Ichichi Saijo of Japan used infrared thermography to observe that the skin temperature in the chest and abdomen acupuncture points was 0.5 to 1°C higher than the surrounding skin. He believed that this was due to the presence of blood vessels under the acupoints. Relevant anatomical data confirm that many acupuncture points are indeed covered with subcutaneous veins or have deep blood vessels penetrating them.
Acupoint researchers believe that human acupuncture points are complex comprehensive structures and functions that are closely related to the nervous system, as well as blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, muscles and other tissues.