Science in Society Archive

A Practising Acupuncturist Speaks

Mark Rues M Ac, Dipl Ac fivecrossroads.com

I am an acupuncturist with a private practice in Philadelphia, PA and work for a Pain Management Clinic in Cherry Hill, NJ. I would like to present some acupuncture findings related to treating patients in chronic pain. The purpose is twofold: one is to share this technique in hopes that other acupuncturists use it and find it helpful in treating patients and two is to spur research.

In acupuncture school, I was taught to use local and distal points to treat pain. Local points were found palpating with hands. I now palpate local points using the end of a needle. For example, if someone is suffering with knee pain, I lightly touch the surface of the knee with the end of the needle. This reveals ‘reactive points’. The patient either experiences a sting or a sensation of heat. I insert needles at these ‘points’ resulting in moving blood into the damaged tissue whether muscle, fascia, tendon, or ligament to ignite healing. There is nothing my eye sees on the surface of the skin that indicates a ‘reactive point’. In fact, a few millimetres away from the ‘reactive point’there may be little reaction. I have found that pain spreads out onto the surface of the body. Some of the ‘reactive points’ may lie on a meridian or be an acupuncture point, but the majority are distributed anywhere on the surface of the skin.

Using this procedure, I have drawn the following conclusions.

1. There is some ‘communication channel’ between the injured tissue below and the surface of the skin.

2. Whether it is muscle, fascia, tendon or ligament, the fibres are ‘twisted’ and will not return to their normal shape and heal until blood flows through them.

3. Finding the ‘reactive points’ with the needle precisely targets the damaged tissue below.

4. Either needling the ‘reactive points’ or lightly touching them with a needle is therapeutic.

5. The needle will vibrate or dance at some of these ‘reactive points’, sometimes quite visibly; using a thin needle works best.

6. Patients report feeling the Qi move anywhere in the body. They describe ‘odd’ sensations far away from the insertion. Recently I needled one leg and the other rocked back and forth. This is how I think the first acupuncturists charted the meridian pathways.

7. Patients report relief and over time begin to heal. This includes chronic pain patients who are being prescribed Oxycodone, a synthetic opioid. The chronic pain patients are seriously hurt. Their orthopaedists and neurologists have run all the tests and performed surgeries with the result that patients are still in serious pain. The patients are now referred to the pain clinic for their monthly prescription. For many patients, this is now their life with no end in sight. The pain medication does work to ease their pain, but it does nothing to promote healing. Abuse of pain medication is now an epidemic in the States.

8. These ‘reactive points’ are found in patients with real pain. If you palpate with a needle a healthy knee, the patient reports feeling the needle but no discomfort. 'Reactive points' are also found on calloused skin such as the foot.

I know I have not discovered anything new, but I believe these reactions lend themselves to be studied by modern medical researchers. My hope is to find out what is happening in terms of anatomy and physiology leading to a modern understanding of acupuncture. And so I offer my own thoughts below.

At the surface of the skin, A delta fibres and C fibres process the body’s pain signals. But I am not clear on what accounts for the damaged tissue below communicating their distress. I believe there are a number of communication systems working in concert. Clearly, the nervous system is one. But I also think the Liquid Crystalline Collagen Fibre Network detailed by Dr Mae-Wan Ho in her book The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms is another. She has expanded on that idea in her paper ‘Superconducting Liquid-Crystalline Water Meridians’, arguing that the “mechanism of action is mediated via quantum coherent liquid crystalline water.” This conclusion dovetails into a possible third that just came to my attention. Dr Gerald Pollack at the University of Washington has demonstrated water possesses four phases - vapour, liquid, solid and now a fourth - liquid crystalline. He has shown in his book The Fourth Phase of Water how it creates an Exclusion Zone (EZ) that may be necessary for the functioning of cells. He reported that this EZ is diminished under anaesthesia, but enhanced when taking aspirin, thus increasing blood flow.

All that raises the following questions for further research: does palpating the body with a needle and then needling those ‘reactive points’ also enhance the EZ Liquid Crystalline Phase leading to greater blood flow? If so, how is the distress of the tissue communicated to the A delta and C fibres? What role does the Liquid Crystalline Collagen Fibre Network mediated via quantum coherent liquid crystalline water play in transmitting the distress? And what role do the quantum coherent liquid crystalline water and EZ water play in healing?

Article first published 28/04/14


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There are 8 comments on this article so far. Add your comment above.

Amal Comment left 29th April 2014 15:03:53
Nice article i expect better contribution from him in the field of acupunture

Linda Tanner Comment left 29th April 2014 20:08:06
Richard Gerber, M.D., discusses acupuncture in some detail in his excellent book, VIBRATIONAL MEDICINE, Third Edition, publ. Bear & Co., Rochester, VT. My recollection includes his discussing the more superficial, as well as deeper "channels", and also fact of the meridians residing in pairs. Much more. Unfortunately he is deceased, so no more editions of this wonderful book.

Donald Joseph Snow,DAOM, MPH, L.Ac. Comment left 30th April 2014 02:02:38
The important part of this article should have been the results of the treatment. This article is written is a "western" medicine fashion where diagnostics is more important that treatment results. I have run an Outcome Based Integrated medicine clinic and in my clinics if a patient does not get at least 50% on the first visit, I don't charge them a penny. I have a thriving clinic and I get paid. This is what patients want and also what any practitioner should want. I have a 2 to 3 month waiting list.

David Tarlo, LAc. Comment left 30th April 2014 04:04:30
Any way to be precise on which end of the needle is used in palpation of ashi points: the sharp insertion end or the top of the handle (end).

Robert Comment left 8th May 2014 03:03:34
Pollack's Crystalline water is enhanced by 3 micron infrared radiation , 270 nm Ultraviolet radiation, and also by a negative charge source. Collagen is synthesis is well known to be enhanced by negative charge and IR radiation. It is the hydrophilic properties of the collagen that cause the formation of the surrounding liquid crystalline continuum(EZ), and not the collagen itself.

Robert Comment left 8th May 2014 03:03:15
Also, Dry skin has an electrical resistance of 5000 Ohms. If we look at the work of James Oschman, then it follows that acupuncture facilitates the conduction of electrons from the environment to adjust and correct the internal environment of the body at acupuncture points.

Robert Comment left 8th May 2014 04:04:00
In fact the conductive nature of the acupuncture needle and it's shape, following Gauss's Law means that the needle tip inserted into the body beyond the electrically resistant skin is an amplification of charge concentration that leverages the transfer of electrons from the external environment to the point of acupuncture application below the skin.

nic mainferme, omd, l.ac. Comment left 7th August 2015 07:07:13
There are many communication systems in the body. Another has been found. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/08/spectacular_dis098271.html Thank you for sharing your findings.