Information Models of Acupuncture Analgesia and Meridian Channels

Acupuncture and meridian channels have been major components of Chinese and Eastern Asian medicine—especially for analgesia—for over 2000 years. In recent decades, electroacupuncture (EA) analgesia has been applied clinically and experimentally. However, there were controversial results between different treatment frequencies, or between the active and the placebo treatments; and the mechanisms of the treatments and the related meridian channels are still unknown. In this study, we propose a new term of infophysics therapy and develop information models of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia and meridian channels, to understand the mechanisms and to explain the controversial results, based on Western theories of information, trigonometry and Fourier series, and physics, as well as published biomedical data. We are trying to build a bridge between Chinese medicine and Western medicine by investigating the Eastern acupuncture analgesia and meridian channels with Western sciences; we model the meridians as a physiological system that is mostly constructed with interstices in or between other physiological systems; we consider frequencies, amplitudes and wave numbers of electric field intensity (EFI) as information data. Our modeling results demonstrate that information regulated with acupuncture (or EA) is different from pain information, we provide answers to explain the controversial published results, and suggest that mechanisms of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia could be mostly involved in information regulation of frequencies and amplitudes of EFI as well as neuronal transmitters such as endorphins. OPEN ACCESS Information 2010, 1 154