"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It is what we know for sure that just ain't so." — Mark Twain
This article, divided into three parts, aims at disclosing the flaws in TCM theories, elucidating modifications made to correct conceptual drawbacks, and providing a firm basis for balanced theoretical structures and highly reproducible clinical applications.
In 1979, the World Health Organization (WHO) approved traditional acupuncture as a valid method of treating indicated diseases, symptoms, or conditions.1 However, numerous systemic re-view and meta-analysis articles reported the controversial treatment effects of acupuncture on various types of disorders.1-13 In addition to poorly conducted experimental designs and methodological weaknesses, no articles have questioned the correctness of TCM theories that guide acupuncture practice and its derivative treatment protocols until the present.
Three of TCM's theories were discovered questionable and required modifications.
Current Status of TCM and Acupuncture
The global popularity of acupuncture does not assure the perfection of TCM theory and the consistency of therapeutic results. Scrutinizing the reliability of TCM foundations becomes indispensable to reassure the wholeness of theoretical frameworks on which the clinical duplicability and academic research advancements are built.
Unlike Western medicine with its high reproducibility resulting from science, traditional acupuncture often exhibits variable outcomes and unstable consistency for the same conditions, even among experienced acupuncturists with advanced training. When acupuncture is incapable of managing pain or numbness with the same success as WHO-approved indications among well-trained practitioners, it is reasonable to challenge the credibility and applicability of TCM theory for different types of disorders. This issue is of particular importance to acupuncturists who seek a fast and reliable acupuncture system with high reproducibility and predictable prognosis after mastering acupuncture's fundamentals.
Traditional acupuncture and many derivative methods have shown exceptional pain relief effects in various cases.14-25 When misconceptions occur concerning the theory, despite the techniques an acupuncturist chooses to apply, the existing "frame" will prevent technical progress and re-search advancements from transcending boundaries and achieving substantial improvements.
Assessing TCM Theory: The Concept of a "Father"
Almost all species in nature, including hermaphrodites, need both sexes to reproduce the next generation. Asexual reproduction may be another primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms and some plants and fungi, but these rare cases hardly represent overall reproduction in general.
One of TCM's fundamentals is "A mother-element generates a son-element" (mother-son relationship), which resembles asexual reproduction. Regardless of why TCM chose an atypical natural phenomenon as a central foundation, Chinese medicine and acupuncture have propagated over centuries and spread internationally without questions being raised by TCM or acupuncture practitioners. If Chinese medicine with the "mother-only" concept has obtained medical achievements and global attention, it is not difficult to find the potential and capability of an acupuncture system with a "father" present to reflect the true laws of nature.
By incorporating the concept of a "father" into TCM theory, looking at how the five-element model explained the generating-controlling relationship, and distributing six paired meridians evenly into their corresponding element, a new six-element model (Figure 1) was conceptualized and established to describe this most basic TCM theory better.
The "parents-children" concept has been applied to clinical practice in the last decade world-wide, including the U.S., and gained substantial evidence-based clinical results.26-32 The management of neuropathy, numbness, and other difficult painful and functional disorders with high reproducibility and success than that of traditional acupuncture lies in the "parents-children" relationship.
The modifications made to TCM theory had contributed acupuncture treatment a new perspective and provided a firm basis for duplicable therapeutic effects on intractable pain and numbness management. The rest of the two topics, the original five-element vs. new six-element and the course of symptoms transmission (CST) in the neck area, will be addressed in the following articles.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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