Questions and Answers about Acupuncture
In April 2003,Guest Posting I was interviewed by Anupam Sharma, a journalist with the magazine from India, Fourth Dimension, which reaches 171,000 readers monthly both there and abroad. I thought you’d like to read it, because I answered a lot of the commonly asked questions about acupuncture that I haven’t written about on the Pulse of Oriental Medicine (PulseMed.org), and because you probably won’t be able to get that magazine.
Anupam Sharma (AS): Dr. Brian Carter, Thank you for the prompt reply and agreeing to do this interview. Tell me, doctor, how does Acupuncture work? Please explain the science behind this traditional method of healing
Brian B. Carter (BBC): Acupuncture is based on Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine (CM) has its own system of diagnosis and treatment, and acupuncture is only one therapy within that medicine. Those who have developed CM since before 2500 B.C. (when our first literary work, the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, was written) used both symptoms and signs to diagnose disease before treating it. They developed a unique form of diagnosis called ‘pattern differentiation.’ Patterns are sets of specific symptoms and signs. For us, finding the signs includes the feeling the pulse and looking at the tongue.
For acupuncture specifically, there is also diagnosis according to the channels. It’s actually a very complicated system of theories… not as simple as it first seems. That complexity allows for a sophisticated flexibility in diagnosis and treatment that can adapt to most clinical situations. According to modern science, acupuncture works via the immune and nervous systems. It has local peripheral nervous system and central nervous system effects. Professor and physicist Zang-hee Cho has begun to use PET scans to map the brain loci affected by specific acupuncture points. Acupuncture affects neurons, electrolytes, neuro-transmitters, and neuropeptides. But even once all that data is in, the traditional system of channels and pattern differentiation will still be the clearest map of how acupuncture works. The biomedical view of physical phenomena is not always well-integrated.