Traditional Chinese medicine has four "skills": traditional Chinese medicine, massage and bone correction, anorectal and acupuncture.
Clinically, people understand the importance of traditional Chinese medicine, massage and osteopathy, anorectal and acupuncture, and generally think that traditional Chinese medicine ranks first, followed by massage and bone, anorectal is used for special diseases, and acupuncture is last.
The order of traditional Chinese medicine is just the opposite, acupuncture is used in the front and the heaviest weight, and traditional Chinese medicine, massage and bone correction and anorectal are the "substitutes" in the back.
Acupuncture is a combination of acupuncture and moxibustion, and now people usually equate acupuncture with acupuncture, and their understanding is narrower. Acupuncture and moxibustion are like chopsticks for Chinese people, complementing each other and supporting each other.
In the past, Chinese medicine used acupuncture to treat diseases, and acupuncture could be used for any illness, and acupuncture could cure all pain. Small and thin steel needles or moxa sticks can achieve the effect of pulling the whole body and dialing thousands of catties, and traditional Chinese medicine and massage are the auxiliary treatments. This also confirms that the decline and loss of acupuncture are more serious.
Few people know that the medical books we currently use, including various manuscripts, prints, and rubbings that have been passed down through the generations, are actually many of the original works that have been lost, some destroyed in wars, some scattered among the people, or plundered by foreign countries.
These lost original works of traditional Chinese medicine include the famous "Yellow Emperor's Neijing", "Treatise on Typhoid Fever", "Shennong's Materia Medica", "Difficult Classic", "Pulse Meridian", "Qianjin Fang" and so on. The current version is fragmented and inferred by later generations, and cannot be compared with the original work.
Why is the "hardest hit area" of Chinese medicine lost not prescriptions and medicinal materials, but acupuncture?
Acupuncture and moxibustion, whether it is the original work or the real thing, a large number of lost, the earliest record of acupuncture is the "Yellow Emperor's Neijing", the detailed record of acupuncture points and the next acupuncture "Difficult Scripture", acupuncture and moxibustion system monograph "Acupuncture A and B Sutra", the collection of acupuncture treatment rules of "Qianjin Fang", "Qianjin Wing Fang", research acupuncture points and drawings of the "Bronze Acupuncture and Moxibustion Acupoint Diagram Sutra", etc., are lost or mutilated, damaged, very regrettable. Even if some are rediscovered, they have become foreign "national treasures".
Moreover, it can be called a national treasure, and the two "acupuncture bronze figures" cast in the Song Dynasty have also been lost, and the existing surviving ones are "imitations".
The loss of monographs means that the theoretical inheritance is faulty, and the loss of physical objects means that the practical operation is imperfect. Even though acupuncture has been hit hard, it is still slowly passed down to this day.
In the last century, there were many "master" figures in acupuncture, even if they used fragmented theories, they still used acupuncture and moxibustion to be superb, especially in the early 70s, which cured Reston, a senior American journalist, and paved the way for the introduction and Xi of acupuncture in Europe and the United States.
In fact, acupuncture and moxibustion concentrate on prevention, treatment, regulation and consolidation in balancing yin and yang and regulating the body, and it is safe, economical and simple.
1. From the point of view of treatment, there are methods such as meridian selection, distal acupoint selection, dialectical acupoint selection, symptomatic acupoint selection, etc., only acupuncture acupuncture acupuncture is matched with acupoints, there are dozens of techniques, there are "ghost door thirteen needles" and other famous acupuncture treatments.
2. From the prescription point of view, there are at least 13 types of prescriptions for common internal scenes, including essence, qi, spirit, blood, dreams, etc., and at least 15 major prescriptions for external scenes, including facial features, limbs, etc., according to statistics, there are 307 effective diseases.
3. From the content point of view, there are research and results on the twelve meridians, tendons, eight strange meridians, skin, meridians and 361 commonly used acupuncture points. If you are sick, you don't need to take medicine, the body has its own "prescription", which can be stimulated by acupuncture.
4. From the point of view of characteristics, it has a quick effect, few side effects, can regulate the human body in both directions, and is cheap and suitable for a wide range of people.
In 1980, the WHO recommended acupuncture for the treatment of 43 diseases, including respiratory, oral, ophthalmology, gastrointestinal, nervous, and skeletal, and in 2010, acupuncture was included in the "List of Intangible Cultural Heritage".
Europe and the United States believe in evidence-based medicine, emphasizing double-blind, randomized and large-sample experiments, and scientists explore the principle of acupuncture. In October 2021, the Harvard University team confirmed that Zusanli can be effective in curing diseases, and the research results were published in the journal Nature. In general, it is still not clear why acupuncture can cure so many diseases, but they are thinking positively.
In recent years, traditional Chinese medicine has gone abroad and still cannot be recognized as a drug and treatment, but acupuncture has taken the lead, mainly acupuncture.
Acupuncture is legal in 47 states in the United States, and as of 2018, there are 38,000 practicing acupuncturists. In Europe, the United States selected a total of 18,000 patients from the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Spain in 2012 to participate in the investigation and discussion of the efficacy of acupuncture, focusing on two aspects: one is that I don't know how it works and why it is comfortable to pierce it, and the other is that it has a quick effect on head, neck, bone and joint, and shoulder pain.
At present, the efficacy of acupuncture in Europe and the United States is still in the research stage, and the mainstream view is: one is the release of endorphins after acupuncture at "acupuncture points" to reduce pain, and the other is to affect the production of cortisol in the body, which helps to control and alleviate inflammation.
However, compared with the treatment of acupuncture in foreign countries, it is much more embarrassing in China, and there are 3 more typical:
1. Acupuncture is a fraud and witchcraft, so it is recommended to ban acupuncture and use chemical drugs instead, and the effect is more obvious.
2. Acupuncture has major medical risks, and it is easy to spread blood-related infectious diseases, which is very unsafe, and it is relatively safe to use surgery or chemical drugs.
3. The smoke produced by moxibustion is uncomfortable, and the concentration is too high to cause cancer.
There are many influential figures such as academicians and experts who question acupuncture, and they have played a leading role.
At the same time, acupuncture, which can treat many diseases in the past, has slowly shrunk and withered in China, and there are fewer and fewer Chinese medicine practitioners who can use acupuncture to treat serious diseases and emergencies, and the prospects are not good.
In short, acupuncture has an important position in traditional Chinese medicine, which once had a brilliant past, and has also been recognized internationally in modern times, but it has been questioned in China, and there are also problems with self-transmission, which is worth pondering.