How many years has the history of acupuncture and moxibustion in traditional Chinese medicine?

As early as more than two thousand years ago, our ancestors knew that there were many special sensory points on human skin? Acupoints. Huangdi Neijing, a famous medical classic written from the 5th century BC to the 1st century BC, has pointed out that "air pockets have different names" and recorded the names of 160 acupoints. In Jin Dynasty, Huangfu Mi compiled the famous Chinese acupuncture book "Acupuncture A-B Classic", and discussed the names, aliases, positions and indications of 340 acupoints in the human body. In the Song Dynasty, Wang redefined acupoints, corrected his mistakes, wrote the Atlas of Acupuncture and Moxibustion at Tongren Acupoints, and pioneered the research and casting of two acupuncture Tongren for acupuncture teaching and examination. Their lifelike shapes and precise carvings are amazing. It can be seen that long ago, China ancient doctors knew how to treat diseases according to acupoints, and formed a complete theoretical system of acupoints in long-term practice.

"Like Classics, People in the Four Seas" contains: "Losing, being fat, and being connected." Therefore, acupoints are also called lost acupoints and Shu acupoints, as well as acupoints, acupoints or meridians. According to the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine, human acupoints have three main functions, which are not only the place where the qi of meridians is injected into the body surface, but also the place where diseases are reflected on the body surface, and the place where acupuncture, massage, qigong and other therapies are carried out. Acupoints have magical effects of "quick pressing" and "quick exorcism". However, what is the essence of acupoints? Is it really a special structure of the human body? For a long time, people have speculated about this and can't agree.

Many people explore the essence of acupoints from their electrical characteristics. 1950, Nakatani, Japan used 12 volt direct current to pass through human skin, and it was found that there were some "good conduction points" with particularly high conductivity on the skin, and their positions coincided with those of acupoints. Shortly thereafter, the famous French acupuncturist Nieboyat, with the help of his assistant, confirmed this phenomenon by measuring the skin resistance, and determined that the acupoint resistance was only half of the skin resistance around him. The measurement of the corpse also got the same result. At the end of 1950s, Chinese scholars' research on acupoint electrophysiology also basically affirmed that acupoints have the characteristics of low resistance and high potential. However, it is speculated that the total area of acupuncture points in the whole body only accounts for four ten thousandths of the body surface, but there are many parts of body surface resistance, far from being limited to acupuncture points. Moreover, physiological activities such as eating, sleeping and exercising, changes in external environment such as time sequence, season and temperature, and fine mental state will all affect the skin resistance value. No wonder the researchers of Shanghai Institute of Hypertension lamented that it is quite difficult to determine acupoints in this way. It took Frenchman De La Foye five years to measure acupoints by this method, but the result was quite different from that of China, so it had to come to an abrupt end.

Some people compare and analyze ancient acupoint theory with modern medical theory, trying to explain it with new theories and concepts. For example, when electric current stimulates the skin, the stimulated muscles contract. The part of the body surface that is stimulated by the weakest current and produces the largest muscle contraction is called the movement point. American scholar Jin Lin proposed that the distribution of exercise acupoints is almost the same as that of traditional acupoints. Japan's soldier head justice and Frost and others in the United States compare acupuncture points with trigger points. The trigger point is considered as a local intersection in the body muscle tissue, which has the characteristics of deep tissue sensitivity, nodules and radiation pain. Although its mechanism is not clear, it is generally believed that it is caused by muscle spasm, endocrine disorder or muscle tension caused by pain or other reasons. When acupuncture points, muscle fibers and nerve fibers in local tissues will be damaged due to the mutual friction between tissues and the interaction between metal needles and tissue dielectrics. In addition, the distribution of the two is similar. Therefore, they think that some characteristics of acupoints are very similar to trigger points. Some people even think that they are just synonyms. It has also been reported that acupoints are closely related to poor acupoints and skin activity points. These multi-channel studies reflect the characteristics of acupoints from the side, which is undoubtedly of certain reference value for exploring the mysteries of acupoints.

Others focus on the morphological structure of acupoints, hoping to uncover the mystery of acupoints in one fell swoop. Experts from Shanghai First Medical College dissected and observed 324 acupoints 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 meridian points on the exterior and interior also belong to the same spinal cord segment. Japanese scholar Sen Hidetaro proved that there are about 100 acupoints in the whole body, which go deep into the nerve bundle. Acupoints are also related to the receptors at the end of the peripheral process of sensory ganglion cells, such as muscle spindle, nerve tendon spindle, tactile corpuscles and annular corpuscles. From the genetic point of view, epidermis and nerve tissue are homologous. There are projection points of skin area and internal organs in the nerve center. Therefore, there may be a correlation between acupoints and embryo morphology. However, some studies have come to the opposite conclusion: nerve fibers are distributed in acupoint and non-acupoint tissues, and there is no obvious difference between them in histology. As for the difference between nerve tissue under acupoints and non-acupoints, it is still unclear. It has also been reported that acupoints are closely related to blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. By using infrared thermal imaging, Kazuo Nishijo observed that the skin temperature of acupoints in the chest and abdomen was 0.5 to 1℃ higher than that of the surrounding skin, which he thought was due to the existence of blood vessels under acupoints. According to anatomical data, many acupoints do cover subcutaneous veins or deep blood vessels.

Acupoint researchers believe that human acupoints are complex and comprehensive structures and functions closely related to nervous system, blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, muscles and other tissues.