The annual North American Symposium on Acupuncture is the main scientific part of the educational program in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) established by the Academy of Pain Research in 1979. Dr T. N. Lee, Founder and Director of the Academy and distinguished researcher who proposed the Thalamic Neuron Theory to explain the analgesic effects of acupuncture (1), maintains the scientific and...

Electrical stimulation through an acupuncture needle in a Chinese point of the human hand decreased the subjectively estimated sensation elicited by noxious and by tactile stimulation of the ipsilateral finger. A hyperbolic relationship was found between the stimulus duration (T, ses) required for the initiation of hypesthesia and the intensity of current (I, mA) passed through the acupuncture ...

Acupuncture has been practiced throughout Asia for more than 4000 years, however, acupuncture analgesia for surgical procedures was only developed and first used in 1958. The basic mechanism reason for better analgesia effects by stimulation of acupoints than of non-acupoints still remains inconclusive. In this work, the role of mast cells in acupuncture analgesia was investigated in Sprague Da...

To this point in time, acupuncture has been used primarily as an analgesic, a therapeutic intervention that controls pain under pathological conditions. Although some of the mechanisms of acupuncture as it applies to pain relief have been studied, little is known of the positive and/or negative effects of this procedure on the physical performance parameters of healthy people, particularly high...

OBJECTIVE To describe the relationship between referred itch (mitempfindung) stimulus and referral points and acupuncture meridians, noting that the neuroanatomical mechanism of mitempfindung has never previously been satisfactorily explained. METHODS Analysis of clinical findings in the author as well as subjects in four previously described studies, comparing proportions in each of five gro...

The modulatory effects on the brain during right versus left side acupuncture stimulation of the same acupuncture point have been a subject of controversy. For clarification of this important methodological issue, the present study was designed to compare the blood oxygen level-dependent responses of acupuncture stimulation on the right versus left Yanglingquan (GB34). Twenty-two healthy subjec...

Acupuncture was first used in China, probable about 2000 years ago. When acupuncture first arrived in the West in the 17th century, the principles which the Chinese had used to explain its actions were at variance with current scientific knowledge of the body's structure and function. This led to the rejection of acupuncture by the medical profession in the UK, although individual practitioners...

I would like to make a few comments regarding the case report, “Bilateral pneumothoraces as a complication of acupuncture”: (1) (1) The authors reported that the patient received needling at the acupuncture point BL 131, it should be (Feishu) or otherwise known as BL 13. (2) The authors mentioned the use of “plum blossom” as a form of stimulatory procedure. It should be “plum blossom needle”. (...