We usually watch TV dramas, often see the ancient physicians in the women's medical treatment is through the pulse, and they through the pulse can also determine whether the woman is pregnant, that in real life, really can be through the pulse on the results of "pregnancy"? If so, what is the rationale behind it?
To understand this, we first need to know what happens to the body after pregnancy.
How to tell if you're pregnant?
Modern women usually find out that they are "pregnant" through a process. First of all, they will find that their period of time does not come. Then, there will be some doubt whether they have been "pregnant". However, it is not possible to tell if you are pregnant just by the fact that you are not having your period. The most important thing to remember is that you have to go to a pharmacy and buy a pregnancy test, and if you see two lines on the test, then you are probably pregnant.
So the question is, how does a pregnancy test determine pregnancy?
When a woman is pregnant, a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a glycoprotein secreted by the trophoblast cells of the placenta, is present in the woman's urine. A pregnancy test can react chemically with HCG, and if it does, there will be two bars or another positive reaction. At this point, we can tell that the woman may be pregnant.
However, pregnancy tests are usually used about 10 days after sex, when they are more accurate, too early or too late may not be accurate, and try to use morning urine. It needs to be observed within 3-5 minutes of use, otherwise it may be inaccurate.
Generally speaking, even if you use a pregnancy test, it's best to go to the hospital for a checkup, and hospitals check whether you're pregnant or not by checking the value of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in the college, which is in fact the same principle as a pregnancy test, except that hospitals check the level of HCG in the blood directly, which can circumvent the errors that may occur with a pregnancy test, and it's more accurate. The same principle applies to the blood test.
Besides, in order to avoid false positives, in addition to checking the level of human chorionic gonadotropin in the blood, there are also other auxiliary tests that can be used to avoid misdiagnosis, such as B-mode ultrasonography, ultrasound Doppler method and so on.
In summary, the main methods used by modern medicine to determine "pregnancy" are hormone levels and imaging techniques.
How can I tell if I'm pregnant?
The question then becomes, how can a doctor determine a pregnant woman's hormone production directly from her pulse? So how does the pulse determine "pregnancy"?
If we look at the chapters of ancient texts about taking a pulse to determine pregnancy, we will find that the content of the various accounts is not quite the same, which suggests that ancient physicians of different eras may have used different methods.
At present, the more mainstream statement is that the pulse of the happy pulse is the slippery pulse.
On the slippery pulse, it means that the person who takes the pulse feels that the pulse is flowing smoothly, and the fingers should be rounded and smooth, like a pearl rolling on a jade disk. However, we should add that if you take the pulse of a young man who is full of energy and blood, you will actually get a similar result, and in addition to this, if a woman is a little bit obese, her pulse will also be similar to the slippery pulse. So, even if you get a slippery pulse result, you may not really be pregnant.
It is understandable that such a problem arises, as pulse-taking today seems to be essentially about feeling the pulse, how fast or slow it is or whether it is strong or not, and it is common for different people to show similar results.
This is actually somewhat similar to today's stethoscopes. Keep in mind that the stethoscope is also currently only a means that doctors use to make initial judgments.
Does this mean that a pulse cannot tell if you are pregnant?
Objectively speaking, it's hard to say, and it's up to the doctor. According to the nature of pulse-taking we mentioned above, we can easily find that pulse-taking actually depends on experience. If some doctors in ancient times often took the pulse of pregnant women, over time, he would have been able to roughly feel the pulse of pregnant women, and could have judged it based on his own experience. To put it plainly, the more the doctor was taking the pulse and the more experience he had, the more accurate he could be. Then, through his long years of experience, he writes medical books to tell later physicians that this type of pulse is a happy pulse. However, because everyone understands it differently, it may not be possible to understand what a happy pulse is at once. Take the Sliding Pulse, which is a pulse that is somewhat similar to the feeling of an iron ball rolling through your fingers in sequence. Everyone's senses are different, so there will be differences in the practical application of this description. So it's still easy for a novice to have problems, and it's not going to be accurate all at once.
So, taking the pulse to determine "pregnancy" is simply a matter of looking at the force and speed of the pulse, and requires years of experience on the part of the doctor. This method of judgment is not very accurate. Modern medicine relies on the detection of hormones and imaging technology, more direct and more accurate, which is why today's hospitals are using the detection of hormones and imaging technology.