China News Agency, Chengdu, May 3rd, Question: Liang Fong: How did ancient Chinese acupuncture go to 193 countries and regions?
China News Agency reporter He Shaoqing
There are thousands of TCM acupuncture centers in London, England, and acupuncture in New York, the United States can cost as much as $500... As one of the most shining business cards of Chinese medicine going to the world, Chinese acupuncture has been used in 193 countries and regions around the world.
When did Chinese acupuncture originate, and why has it received widespread attention and attention from the international community?
Why can't acupuncture be justified with the Western research system?
How to use modern science to prove the existence of acupuncture points and meridians to the world?
Liang Fong, vice chairman of the World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, a national key discipline leader of acupuncture and massage in China, and chief professor of acupuncture and moxibustion at Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Agency "Dongxi Wen" and gave an in-depth interpretation.
The following is a summary of the interview transcript:
China News Service: When did Chinese acupuncture originate? What changes have been experienced in the thousands of years of history?
Liang Fong:
As a general term for acupuncture and moxibustion, acupuncture is a traditional medical method developed by the Chinese nation in thousands of years of medical treatment, life and production practice.
Its origin can be traced back to the Neolithic Age. Chinese archaeologists have discovered a tool made of special stones that can relieve pain, massage and detoxify.
This stone tool, called Bianstone, is the earliest acupuncture tool with archaeological evidence.
The development of acupuncture has always been closely integrated with the technology of the times.
In primitive society, acupuncture tools such as Bianstone and bamboo needles were mainly used to treat ailments.
During the Yin and Shang Dynasties, with the improvement of bronze smelting technology, bronze needles began to be widely used as acupuncture needles.
The bronze needles unearthed at present are sharper than Bianstone, but have poor toughness.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, with the appearance of iron tools, people made iron into needle tools of different shapes.
With the cultural prosperity of various schools of thought, acupuncture and moxibustion began to rise from clinical practice to a complete theoretical system.
The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine records a wealth of acupuncture and moxibustion methods, which have been handed down to this day.
In 2013, more than 920 medical bamboo slips, 50 wooden slips, and lacquer portraits of human meridians and acupoints with small characters such as "heart" and "lung" were unearthed from the Laoguanshan Han Tomb in Chengdu.
In these medical bamboo slips, the word "杝西" appears many times.
After research, it was found that "杝xi" is a false word for "Bianque", and some medical books are very likely to be lost classic books of the Bianque School of Chinese Medicine.
The unearthed figure is about 14 centimeters high, and the facial features and limbs are accurately depicted. It is the earliest and most complete medical model of meridian and acupoint human body discovered in China so far.
It should be noted that the meridians depicted by the portrait include 9 main meridians and 1 extraordinary meridian. The time was after the medical book "Silk Book: Meridian Chapter" unearthed in Mawangdui, Changsha, and before the "Huangdi Neijing". It has important academic value.
With the advancement of science and technology, acupuncture has produced different methods of diagnosis and treatment, and the materials of moxibustion are also more abundant.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, not only moxa sticks replaced moxa sticks, but also needles developed in a painless direction.
During this period, Western medicine was introduced, and acupuncture and moxibustion began to be combined with modern medicine.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the modernization and internationalization of acupuncture and moxibustion made its development into a fast lane.
Ming Dynasty "acupoint acupuncture bronze statue".
The cultural relic is 86.5 cm high, with 15 meridians and 354 acupoint names cast on the whole body. The location of the acupoints is consistent with the medical literature of the mid-Ming Dynasty.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Zhang Chang
China News Agency reporter: As an important part of traditional Chinese medicine, how does acupuncture go to the world? Acupuncture is currently being used in 193 countries and regions around the world. Why does acupuncture receive widespread attention and attention from the international community?
Liang Fong:
The first climax of acupuncture going international can be traced back to the Sui and Tang dynasties, and acupuncture was gradually introduced into Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other Asian countries.
The medical books brought by the monk Jianzhen to Japan include "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine", "Shen Nong's Materia Medica" and "A and B Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion", so Japan still refers to traditional Chinese medicine as Chinese medicine.
During the Ming Dynasty, acupuncture was first introduced to France and gradually spread to Europe.
In 1972, when US President Nixon visited China, journalist James Reston was invited by the Chinese government to visit with him. During this period, he was admitted to Peking Union Medical College Hospital due to sudden acute appendicitis and underwent appendectomy.
On the second day after the operation, Reston developed abdominal distention and pain, and Chinese doctors chose to treat him with acupuncture and moxibustion.
According to Reston, at that time, a young Chinese acupuncturist put three needles in his right elbow and under both knees, and burned his abdomen with a "cheap cigar-like" moxa roll. After the treatment, he felt bloated. Symptoms were significantly reduced.
After the reporter recovered, he published an article overseas, reviewing his magical experience of receiving acupuncture and moxibustion, setting off another wave of acupuncture fever overseas.
An acupuncture mannequin brought back from China by President Nixon's attaché in February 1972.
Photo by Fajing Wei of China News Agency
Since the 21st century, acupuncture has made continuous achievements in clinical practice, which fully proves the scientific nature and effectiveness of acupuncture and is widely popular in the world.
At first overseas, acupuncture was mainly used as alternative medicine and complementary medicine, but now many countries and regions are promoting and applying acupuncture as holistic medicine.
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently 193 countries and regions in the world that use acupuncture, and 59 countries and regions recognize acupuncture through legislation.
In the United States, since acupuncture treatment was legalized in Nevada and California in 1972, more than 40 states and Washington, D.C. have now legislated acupuncture, and some insurance companies have included acupuncture in their insurance plans.
After the legislation of acupuncture in British Columbia in 1996, Quebec and Alberta also carried out legislative management on acupuncture.
In addition, acupuncture is included in Cuba's national health care system.
In Asia, acupuncture has gained legal status in Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and other countries.
In Africa, as early as 1975, the Egyptian government affirmed the application of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture in the form of documents.
In 2002, the South African government officially promulgated the "Administrative Regulations of the South African Allied Health Professional Committee", which listed Chinese medicine and acupuncture as one of the 10 medical professions that can be engaged in, and established the legal status of Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
Ghana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mauritius and other countries have also included traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture in the management of traditional medicine management departments.
According to the World Health Organization, acupuncture is the most popular and widely used traditional medical therapy in the world.
The reason is that compared with other traditional medicines, acupuncture has a complete theoretical system and unique treatment methods, and has rich treatment tools such as acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, scraping, etc., and is closely integrated with modern technology to derive a variety of treatment techniques.
Acupuncture and moxibustion are easy to use and low cost. They belong to green therapy. They can adjust the treatment of diseases through stimulation of the body surface, which is different from oral drug treatment.
Of course, the most important reason is that acupuncture is a medicine developed by the Chinese nation through thousands of years of clinical practice, and its efficacy has been widely recognized.
Chinese acupuncture expert Wang Yutingzi performed acupuncture on a 50-year-old village woman in Cambodia.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Huang Yaohui
China News Agency reporter: What difficulties did acupuncture and moxibustion overcome in the process of going global? Why can't we just use the western research system to demonstrate traditional Chinese medicine? How to use modern science to prove the existence of acupuncture points and meridians to the world?
Liang Fong:
The earliest acupuncture “going out” faced three major bottlenecks—acupuncture pain, needle hygiene, and the legal system. Now these three major problems have been basically resolved.
First of all, the needles of acupuncture are made more slender, and the tube acupuncture method is used to make most patients feel no pain; secondly, the original needles will be used repeatedly for half a year or more, but now they are all one-time use. The risk of infectious diseases is avoided; finally, as more and more countries legislate to recognize and protect acupuncture, the legal bottleneck for acupuncture to “go global” is gradually reduced.
Although the above difficulties have been basically resolved, the development of acupuncture overseas still faces some new bottlenecks.
As an important part of TCM, acupuncture is guided by TCM theories such as Chinese culture, the holistic concept of TCM and individualized treatment, which is different from the Western medical theoretical system.
German and other foreign research teams have used Western medical research methods to conclude that there is no significant difference between acupuncture points and non-acupoints.
In order to prove to the world that the efficacy of acupuncture and moxibustion is real and evidence-based, China launched the first 973 project in the field of acupuncture and moxibustion in 2006, "Clinical-based basic research on meridian effect specificity".
For more than ten years, more than 200 scholars from more than 10 universities and research institutes in China have conducted clinical trials on more than 5,000 patients across the country, comparing acupoints and non-acupoints, different acupoints in the same meridian, and different acupoints in different meridians. Efficacy, the conditions involved include migraine, angina pectoris, functional dyspepsia, etc.
The test results show that the effective rate of acupuncture is as high as 70% to 90%, which proves the effectiveness of acupuncture points to the world.
Liang Fenghong, chief professor of acupuncture and moxibustion at Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, instructed students to do animal (rat) experiments.
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
The study found that the specificity of acupoint effect is related to the circulation of meridians and the state of acupoints. The transformation of meridian points from "silence" under physiological conditions to "activation" under pathological conditions is the key to exerting the specificity of meridian point effects. There are differences between acupoints in mast cell distribution, collagen morphology, element content, etc. Among them, mast cell degranulation is one of the important initiating signals specific to the meridian effect. For non-acupoints, it has significant targeting characteristics.
Acupuncture circles often say "it is better to lose its acupoints than to lose its meridians", which means that when selecting acupoints, it is possible to deviate from the acupoints, but not from the meridians.
Although the existence of acupuncture points has been widely recognized, there are still international doubts about the existence of meridians.
In addition to proving the "existence of acupuncture points" to the world, we are using modern science to prove the effectiveness of meridians to the world, further enriching the theoretical basis of TCM acupuncture.
After more than 10 years of in-depth research, the project team has, for the first time, systematically and in-depth revealed the biological basis and scientific connotation of the meridian-specific laws of acupuncture effects from three key links: local activation of acupoints, central response and target organ effect.
As a discipline guided by the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and moxibustion must follow the development law of traditional Chinese medicine.
At the same time, TCM acupuncture is not a closed system, it is very inclusive to modern science and technology.
Modern multidisciplinary interaction can promote the scientific understanding of acupuncture and provide the possibility for in-depth elucidation of the related mechanisms of acupuncture.
Only by inheriting the essence, keeping upright and innovating, and breaking the limitation of the way of thinking of various disciplines through modern multi-disciplinary crossover, can the ancient acupuncture be developed faster and better.
(Finish)
Interviewee Profile:
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
Liang Fenghong, Chief Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Vice Chairman of World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies, Leader of National Key Discipline Acupuncture and Tuina, Chief Scientist of 2 National 973 Program Projects, Host of Major Projects of National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chief Scientist of Qihuang Project of State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Director of Key Research Office of State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and former President of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
He took the lead in introducing the principles and methods of evidence-based medicine into the field of acupuncture and moxibustion, pioneered the construction of a theoretical system of evidence-based acupuncture and moxibustion, and successfully applied it to clinical practice of acupuncture and moxibustion.