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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